In This Chapter
Delving into Bluetooth
Enabling cell phone networking with Bluetooth
Getting Bluetooth on your PDA or PC
Discovering other Bluetooth devices
Most of the time, when people talk about wireless networks, they’re talking
about wireless local area networks (LANs). LANs, as the name
implies, are local, meaning that they don’t cover a wide area (like a town or a
city block). Wide area networks (WANs), like the Internet, do that bigger job.
For the most part, you can think of a LAN as something that’s designed to
cover your entire house (and maybe surrounding areas like the back patio).
Another kind of wireless network is being developed and promoted by wireless
equipment manufacturers called the personal area network (PAN), which is
designed to cover just a few yards of space and not a whole house (or office,
or factory floor, or whatever). PANs are typically designed to connect personal
devices (cell phones, laptop computers, and handheld computers/personal
digital assistants [PDAs]) and also as a technology for connecting peripheral
devices to these personal electronics. For example, you could use a wireless
PAN technology to connect a mouse and a keyboard to your computer without
any cables under the desk for your beagle to trip over.
The difference between LANs and PANs isn’t all that clear cut. Some devices
might be able to establish network connections by using either LAN or PAN
technologies. The bottom-line distinction between LANs and PANs is this: If
something connects to a computer by a network cable today, its wireless connection
will usually be a LAN; if it connects by a local cable (like Universal
Serial Bus [USB]), its wireless connection will usually be a PAN.
In this chapter, we discuss the most prominent wireless PAN technology:
Bluetooth, which we introduce in Chapter 3. Bluetooth is a technology that’s
been in development for years and years. We first wrote about it in our first
edition of Smart Homes For Dummies (Wiley Publishing, Inc.) in 1999. For a
while, it seemed that Bluetooth might end up in the historical dustbin of wireless
networking — a great idea that never panned out — but as we write, it
appears that the technology has caught up with its promise. We expect to see
a ton of new Bluetooth devices hitting the market over the next few years.
Bluetooth is still a relatively new technology. Although a lot of Bluetooth
products (mainly cell phones and cell phone accessories) are now available,
other Bluetooth products (such as keyboards) aren’t widely available in the
United States (where we’re based). Bluetooth seems to be taking off first in
Europe (and to a slightly lesser degree, in Asia) and moving over to the
United States a bit more slowly. This isn’t really surprising because a lot of
mobile technologies (particularly cell phone-related technologies) have been
developing faster in those places than they have in the U.S. We mention this
because some of the Bluetooth categories that we discuss in this chapter are
really in the coming-soon category when it comes to U.S. availability. We’re
confident that many of these devices will be available in the U.S. by the time
that you read this (or soon thereafter), but as we write in early 2003, they’re
not quite here yet. A great resource for finding cool Bluetooth gear before it
becomes generally available in the U.S. is the BlueUnplugged online store
based in England (www.blueunplugged.com).
Friday 27 February 2009
Discovering Bluetooth Basics
Discovering Bluetooth Basics
Let’s get the biggest question out of the way first: What the heck is up with
that name? Well, it’s got nothing to do with what happens when you chew
on your pen a bit too hard during a stressful meeting. Nor do blueberry pie,
blueberry toaster pastries, or any other blue food. Actually, Bluetooth (www.
bluetooth.com is the Web site for the industry group) is named after Harald
Blåtand (Bluetooth), King of Denmark from 940 to 981, who was responsible
for uniting Denmark and Norway. The idea here is that Bluetooth can unite
things that were previously un-unitable. (We’re a little rusty on our medieval
Scandinavian history, so if we’re wrong about that, blame our high school history
teachers — if you’re a Dane or Norwegian, feel free to e-mail us back
with the story here!)
The big cell phone (and other telecommunications equipment) manufacturer
Ericsson was the first company to promote the technology (back in the 1990s,
as we mention earlier), and other cell phone companies joined in with Ericsson
to come up with an industry de facto standard for the technology. The Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — the folks who created the 802.11
standards that we’ve been talking about throughout Wireless Home Networking
For Dummies— have since become involved with the technology under the
auspices of a committee named 802.15. The initial IEEE standard for PANs,
802.15.1, was adapted from the Bluetooth specification and is fully compatible
with Bluetooth 1.1, which is the third and current version of Bluetooth.
If you’re looking for a few facts and figures about Bluetooth, you’ve come to
the right chapter. Here are some of the most important things to remember
about Bluetooth:
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency spectrum. It uses the same
general chunk of the airwaves as do 802.11b and 802.11g. (This means that
interference between the two technologies is indeed a possibility.)
The Bluetooth specification allows a maximum data connection speed
of 723 Kbps. Compare this with the 11 Mbps of 802.11b. Bluetooth is
much slower than wireless LAN technologies.
Bluetooth uses much lower power levels than do wireless LAN technologies
(802.11x). Thus, Bluetooth devices should have a much smaller
impact, power-wise, than an 802.11 device. This is a huge deal for some
of the small electronic devices that are being Bluetooth-enabled because
it means that Bluetooth will eat up a whole lot less battery life than will
802.11 systems.
Because Bluetooth uses a lower power level than does 802.11, it can’t
beam its radio waves as far as 802.11 does. Thus, the range of Bluetooth
is considerably less than that of a wireless LAN. Theoretically, you can
get up to 100 meters, but most Bluetooth systems use less than the maximum
allowable power ratings, and you’ll typically see ranges of 30 feet
or less with most Bluetooth gear — meaning that you’ll be able to reach
across the room (or into the next room) but not all the way across the
house.
Bluetooth uses a peer-to-peer networking model. This means that you
don’t have to connect devices back through a central network hub like
an access point (AP) — devices can connect directly to each other using
Bluetooth’s wireless link. The Bluetooth networking process is highly
automated; Bluetooth devices actively seek out other Bluetooth devices
to see whether they can connect and share information.
Bluetooth doesn’t require line of sight between any of the connected
devices.
Bluetooth can also connect multiple devices together in a point-tomultipoint
fashion. One master device (often a laptop computer or a PDA)
can connect with up to seven slave devices simultaneously in this manner.
(Slave devices are usually things such as keyboards, printers, and so on.)
The really big deal that you should take away from this list is the fact that
Bluetooth is designed to be a low-power (and low-priced!) technology for
portable and mobile devices. Bluetooth (do they call it Bleutooth in France?)
is not designed to replace a wireless LAN. It’s designed to be cheaply built
into devices to allow quick and easy connections.
Some of the PAN applications that Bluetooth has been designed to perform
include the following:
Cable replacement: Peripheral devices that use cables today —
keyboards, mice, cell phone headsets, and the like — can now (or will
soon, in the very near future) cut that cord and use Bluetooth links
instead.
Synchronization: Many people have important information (such as
address books, phone number lists, and calendars) on multiple devices
(such as a PC, PDA, and cell phone), and keeping this information synchronized
(up-to-date and identical on each device) can be a real pain in
the butt. Bluetooth (when combined with synchronization software)
allows these devices to wirelessly and automatically talk with each other
and keep up to date.
Simple file sharing: If you’ve ever been at a meeting with a group of
technology geeks (we go to these meetings all the time, but then, we’re
geeks ourselves), you might have noticed these folks pulling out their
Palm PDAs and doing all sorts of contortions with them. What they’re
doing is exchanging files (usually electronic business cards) via the
built-in infrared (IR) system found on Palms. This is an awkward system
because you need to have the Palms literally inches apart with the IR
sensors lined up. Bluetooth, because it uses radio waves, has a much
greater range, which doesn’t require that direct IR alignment . . . and is
much faster to boot.
Look for even more cool applications in the future. For example, Bluetooth
could be used to connect an electronic wallet (located on your PDA or cell
phone — the line between these devices is becoming blurred, so perhaps
your PDA/cell phone-combo device) to an electronic kiosk. For example, a
soda machine could be Bluetooth enabled, and if you wanted a soda, you
wouldn’t need to spend ten minutes trying to feed that last, raggedy dollar
bill in your wallet into the machine. You’d just press a button on your PDA/cell
phone, and it would send a buck from your electronic wallet to the machine
and dispense your soda. (Pat will have a root beer, thank you very much.)
Another common future application might be customized information for a
particular area. Ever go to one of those huge conferences held in places like
Las Vegas? The booth numbers tend to go from 0 to 20,000, and the convention
floor is about the size of 50 football fields — in other words, it’s a real
pain in the rear to find your way around. With Bluetooth, you can simply walk
by an info kiosk and have a floor map and exhibitor display downloaded to
your PDA. We’re hoping that this is in place next time that we go to the
Consumer Electronics Show; we hate being late for appointments because
we’re spending an hour searching for a booth.
Let’s get the biggest question out of the way first: What the heck is up with
that name? Well, it’s got nothing to do with what happens when you chew
on your pen a bit too hard during a stressful meeting. Nor do blueberry pie,
blueberry toaster pastries, or any other blue food. Actually, Bluetooth (www.
bluetooth.com is the Web site for the industry group) is named after Harald
Blåtand (Bluetooth), King of Denmark from 940 to 981, who was responsible
for uniting Denmark and Norway. The idea here is that Bluetooth can unite
things that were previously un-unitable. (We’re a little rusty on our medieval
Scandinavian history, so if we’re wrong about that, blame our high school history
teachers — if you’re a Dane or Norwegian, feel free to e-mail us back
with the story here!)
The big cell phone (and other telecommunications equipment) manufacturer
Ericsson was the first company to promote the technology (back in the 1990s,
as we mention earlier), and other cell phone companies joined in with Ericsson
to come up with an industry de facto standard for the technology. The Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) — the folks who created the 802.11
standards that we’ve been talking about throughout Wireless Home Networking
For Dummies— have since become involved with the technology under the
auspices of a committee named 802.15. The initial IEEE standard for PANs,
802.15.1, was adapted from the Bluetooth specification and is fully compatible
with Bluetooth 1.1, which is the third and current version of Bluetooth.
If you’re looking for a few facts and figures about Bluetooth, you’ve come to
the right chapter. Here are some of the most important things to remember
about Bluetooth:
Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency spectrum. It uses the same
general chunk of the airwaves as do 802.11b and 802.11g. (This means that
interference between the two technologies is indeed a possibility.)
The Bluetooth specification allows a maximum data connection speed
of 723 Kbps. Compare this with the 11 Mbps of 802.11b. Bluetooth is
much slower than wireless LAN technologies.
Bluetooth uses much lower power levels than do wireless LAN technologies
(802.11x). Thus, Bluetooth devices should have a much smaller
impact, power-wise, than an 802.11 device. This is a huge deal for some
of the small electronic devices that are being Bluetooth-enabled because
it means that Bluetooth will eat up a whole lot less battery life than will
802.11 systems.
Because Bluetooth uses a lower power level than does 802.11, it can’t
beam its radio waves as far as 802.11 does. Thus, the range of Bluetooth
is considerably less than that of a wireless LAN. Theoretically, you can
get up to 100 meters, but most Bluetooth systems use less than the maximum
allowable power ratings, and you’ll typically see ranges of 30 feet
or less with most Bluetooth gear — meaning that you’ll be able to reach
across the room (or into the next room) but not all the way across the
house.
Bluetooth uses a peer-to-peer networking model. This means that you
don’t have to connect devices back through a central network hub like
an access point (AP) — devices can connect directly to each other using
Bluetooth’s wireless link. The Bluetooth networking process is highly
automated; Bluetooth devices actively seek out other Bluetooth devices
to see whether they can connect and share information.
Bluetooth doesn’t require line of sight between any of the connected
devices.
Bluetooth can also connect multiple devices together in a point-tomultipoint
fashion. One master device (often a laptop computer or a PDA)
can connect with up to seven slave devices simultaneously in this manner.
(Slave devices are usually things such as keyboards, printers, and so on.)
The really big deal that you should take away from this list is the fact that
Bluetooth is designed to be a low-power (and low-priced!) technology for
portable and mobile devices. Bluetooth (do they call it Bleutooth in France?)
is not designed to replace a wireless LAN. It’s designed to be cheaply built
into devices to allow quick and easy connections.
Some of the PAN applications that Bluetooth has been designed to perform
include the following:
Cable replacement: Peripheral devices that use cables today —
keyboards, mice, cell phone headsets, and the like — can now (or will
soon, in the very near future) cut that cord and use Bluetooth links
instead.
Synchronization: Many people have important information (such as
address books, phone number lists, and calendars) on multiple devices
(such as a PC, PDA, and cell phone), and keeping this information synchronized
(up-to-date and identical on each device) can be a real pain in
the butt. Bluetooth (when combined with synchronization software)
allows these devices to wirelessly and automatically talk with each other
and keep up to date.
Simple file sharing: If you’ve ever been at a meeting with a group of
technology geeks (we go to these meetings all the time, but then, we’re
geeks ourselves), you might have noticed these folks pulling out their
Palm PDAs and doing all sorts of contortions with them. What they’re
doing is exchanging files (usually electronic business cards) via the
built-in infrared (IR) system found on Palms. This is an awkward system
because you need to have the Palms literally inches apart with the IR
sensors lined up. Bluetooth, because it uses radio waves, has a much
greater range, which doesn’t require that direct IR alignment . . . and is
much faster to boot.
Look for even more cool applications in the future. For example, Bluetooth
could be used to connect an electronic wallet (located on your PDA or cell
phone — the line between these devices is becoming blurred, so perhaps
your PDA/cell phone-combo device) to an electronic kiosk. For example, a
soda machine could be Bluetooth enabled, and if you wanted a soda, you
wouldn’t need to spend ten minutes trying to feed that last, raggedy dollar
bill in your wallet into the machine. You’d just press a button on your PDA/cell
phone, and it would send a buck from your electronic wallet to the machine
and dispense your soda. (Pat will have a root beer, thank you very much.)
Another common future application might be customized information for a
particular area. Ever go to one of those huge conferences held in places like
Las Vegas? The booth numbers tend to go from 0 to 20,000, and the convention
floor is about the size of 50 football fields — in other words, it’s a real
pain in the rear to find your way around. With Bluetooth, you can simply walk
by an info kiosk and have a floor map and exhibitor display downloaded to
your PDA. We’re hoping that this is in place next time that we go to the
Consumer Electronics Show; we hate being late for appointments because
we’re spending an hour searching for a booth.
Bluetooth Mobile Phones
Bluetooth Mobile Phones
The first place where Bluetooth technology is really taking off is in the cell
phone world. This probably shouldn’t be a surprise because Ericsson (a
huge, cell phone maker) was the initial proponent of the technology, and
other big (huge, actually) cell phone companies such as Nokia are also huge
proponents of the technology.
In early 2003, just about every new phone being announced (except for the
really cheap-o ones) includes Bluetooth technology. Sony Ericsson (that’s
Ericsson’s brand), Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens, among others,
have all begun selling Bluetooth-enabled phones. The adoption of the technology
has been really spectacular. In 2002, it was a rarity, and in 2003, it’s
just about standard.
You can do a lot of things with Bluetooth in a cell phone, but the four most
common applications are the following:
Replacing cables: Many people use headsets with their cell phones. It’s
a lot easier to hear with an earpiece in your ear than it is to hold one of
today’s miniscule cell phones up to your ear . . . and a lot more convenient,
too. The wire running up your torso, around your arm, and along
the side of your head into your ear is a real pain, though. (Some people
go to great lengths to keep from being tangled up in this wire — check
out the jackets at www.scottevest.com.) A better solution is to connect
your headset wirelessly — using Bluetooth, of course.
Synchronizing phone books: Lots of us keep a phone book on our PC or
PDA — and most of us who do have been utterly frustrated by the difficulty
that we face when we try to get these phone books onto our cell
phones. If you can do it at all (and you often can’t), you end up buying
some special cable and software and then you still have to manually correct
some of the entries. But with Bluetooth on your cell phone and PC
or PDA, the process can be automatic. (In the meanwhile, we’ve been
using FutureDial, Inc.’s SnapSync [www.futuredial.com; $29] phone
synchronization software to load numbers into our phones. It’s the first
software that we’ve found that does the trick easily and without error.
Buy it until you get a Bluetooth phone!)
Going hands-free in the car: Face it, driving with a cell phone in your
hands isn’t a very safe thing to do. Using a headset is better, but the best
choice (except not using your phone while driving) is to use a completely
hands-free system in your car, which uses a microphone and speakers
(the speakers from your car audio system). This used to take a costly
installation process and meant having someone rip into the wiring and
interior of your car. And if you bought a new phone, you probably
needed to have the old hands-free gear ripped out and a new one
installed. No more — Bluetooth cars are here, and they let you use any
Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to go hands-free. Just set the phone in the
glove box or dashboard cubbyhole and don’t touch it again. Keep your
hands and eyes on the road!
Getting your laptop on the Internet while on the road: We think that
the best way to connect your laptop to the Internet, when you’re out
of the house, is to find an 802.11 hot spot (we talk about these in Chapter
16), but sometimes you’re just not near a hot spot. Well, worry no
more, because if you’ve got a cell phone and laptop with Bluetooth, you
can use your cell phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet.
With most cell phone services, you can establish a low-speed, dialup
Internet connection for some basic stuff (like getting e-mail or reading
text-heavy Web pages). If your cell phone system (and plan) includes a
high-speed option (one of the so-called 2.5 or 3G systems), you can get
online at speeds rivaling (although not yet equaling) broadband connections
like digital subscriber line (DSL). All without wires!
The list of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and accessories is already too long
for us to list here. The Bluetooth Web site (listed earlier) maintains an up-todate
listing of all Bluetooth cell phones and cell phone accessories available.
We expect that list to go from merely large (today) to huge in the very near
future.
We also expect the list of applications for Bluetooth on cell phones to grow.
For example, many new cell phones are camera phones with a built-in digital
camera. The cell phone companies promote this concept because they can
charge customers for multimedia messaging services (MMSes) and allow
people to send pictures to other cell phone customers. But we can also foresee
an application where you could use Bluetooth to send the picture that
you just snapped to your buddy’s cell phone when he’s within range (for
free!) or to download your pictures to your PC when you get home.
We’re beginning to see Bluetooth headsets (like those currently available for
cell phones) becoming available for home cordless phones as well. JABRA’s
FreeSpeak wireless headset and multi-adapter for non-Bluetooth phones
(www.jabra.com; $179) plugs into any phone with a 2.5mm jack.
The first place where Bluetooth technology is really taking off is in the cell
phone world. This probably shouldn’t be a surprise because Ericsson (a
huge, cell phone maker) was the initial proponent of the technology, and
other big (huge, actually) cell phone companies such as Nokia are also huge
proponents of the technology.
In early 2003, just about every new phone being announced (except for the
really cheap-o ones) includes Bluetooth technology. Sony Ericsson (that’s
Ericsson’s brand), Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens, among others,
have all begun selling Bluetooth-enabled phones. The adoption of the technology
has been really spectacular. In 2002, it was a rarity, and in 2003, it’s
just about standard.
You can do a lot of things with Bluetooth in a cell phone, but the four most
common applications are the following:
Replacing cables: Many people use headsets with their cell phones. It’s
a lot easier to hear with an earpiece in your ear than it is to hold one of
today’s miniscule cell phones up to your ear . . . and a lot more convenient,
too. The wire running up your torso, around your arm, and along
the side of your head into your ear is a real pain, though. (Some people
go to great lengths to keep from being tangled up in this wire — check
out the jackets at www.scottevest.com.) A better solution is to connect
your headset wirelessly — using Bluetooth, of course.
Synchronizing phone books: Lots of us keep a phone book on our PC or
PDA — and most of us who do have been utterly frustrated by the difficulty
that we face when we try to get these phone books onto our cell
phones. If you can do it at all (and you often can’t), you end up buying
some special cable and software and then you still have to manually correct
some of the entries. But with Bluetooth on your cell phone and PC
or PDA, the process can be automatic. (In the meanwhile, we’ve been
using FutureDial, Inc.’s SnapSync [www.futuredial.com; $29] phone
synchronization software to load numbers into our phones. It’s the first
software that we’ve found that does the trick easily and without error.
Buy it until you get a Bluetooth phone!)
Going hands-free in the car: Face it, driving with a cell phone in your
hands isn’t a very safe thing to do. Using a headset is better, but the best
choice (except not using your phone while driving) is to use a completely
hands-free system in your car, which uses a microphone and speakers
(the speakers from your car audio system). This used to take a costly
installation process and meant having someone rip into the wiring and
interior of your car. And if you bought a new phone, you probably
needed to have the old hands-free gear ripped out and a new one
installed. No more — Bluetooth cars are here, and they let you use any
Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to go hands-free. Just set the phone in the
glove box or dashboard cubbyhole and don’t touch it again. Keep your
hands and eyes on the road!
Getting your laptop on the Internet while on the road: We think that
the best way to connect your laptop to the Internet, when you’re out
of the house, is to find an 802.11 hot spot (we talk about these in Chapter
16), but sometimes you’re just not near a hot spot. Well, worry no
more, because if you’ve got a cell phone and laptop with Bluetooth, you
can use your cell phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet.
With most cell phone services, you can establish a low-speed, dialup
Internet connection for some basic stuff (like getting e-mail or reading
text-heavy Web pages). If your cell phone system (and plan) includes a
high-speed option (one of the so-called 2.5 or 3G systems), you can get
online at speeds rivaling (although not yet equaling) broadband connections
like digital subscriber line (DSL). All without wires!
The list of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and accessories is already too long
for us to list here. The Bluetooth Web site (listed earlier) maintains an up-todate
listing of all Bluetooth cell phones and cell phone accessories available.
We expect that list to go from merely large (today) to huge in the very near
future.
We also expect the list of applications for Bluetooth on cell phones to grow.
For example, many new cell phones are camera phones with a built-in digital
camera. The cell phone companies promote this concept because they can
charge customers for multimedia messaging services (MMSes) and allow
people to send pictures to other cell phone customers. But we can also foresee
an application where you could use Bluetooth to send the picture that
you just snapped to your buddy’s cell phone when he’s within range (for
free!) or to download your pictures to your PC when you get home.
We’re beginning to see Bluetooth headsets (like those currently available for
cell phones) becoming available for home cordless phones as well. JABRA’s
FreeSpeak wireless headset and multi-adapter for non-Bluetooth phones
(www.jabra.com; $179) plugs into any phone with a 2.5mm jack.
Bluetooth PDAs
Bluetooth PDAs
In addition to cell phones, the other category of device that’s really seeing a
lot of action in the Bluetooth arena is the PDA category. In case you’re not
familiar with the concept, the term PDA (personal digital assistant) encompasses
a wide range of handheld computing devices — and therefore, PDAs
are also often referred to as handhelds.
The most common types of PDAs are the following:
PDAs that use the Palm operating system (OS): These are the granddaddies
of the PDA space. Palm’s original model, the Palm Pilot, basically created
the entire multibillion dollar PDA market back in the ’90s. Today,
Palm has been split into two separate groups: Palm, Inc. (www.palm.com),
that makes a line of PDAs; and PalmSource, Inc. (www.palmsource.com),
that develops the Palm OS. One of the reasons why the company has been
split in two is the fact that a host of other companies (such as Sony, with
its CLIÉ line [(www.sony.com/clie]) also manufacture and sell Palm OSbased
PDAs. Speaking very generally (there are a few notable exceptions),
Palm OS PDAs are the cheapest and easiest but also the least powerful (in
terms of raw computing power) of the PDAs available today.
Handhelds that use Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system: Pocket PC
handhelds are typically (though not always) a bit more expensive and
faster than Palm OS PDAs. The major manufacturers of Pocket PC systems
include Hewlett-Packard (HP; www.hp.com), Toshiba (www.toshiba.com),
and Dell (www.dell.com). In many ways, down to the user interface,
Pocket PCs tend to mirror Windows-based desktop and laptop computers
in a smaller, shrunken-down form. Pocket PC handhelds used to be considerably
more expensive than Palm handhelds, but because of a price war
among the vendors, the price differential has greatly decreased.
PDA/cell phone combinations: As we mention earlier in the
“Discovering Bluetooth Basics” section of this chapter, the line between
PDAs and cell phones becomes a bit more blurry with each passing day.
Companies such as Handspring (www.handspring.com) sell Palm OSbased
devices that are cell phones and PDAs in one, and other companies
such as Siemens (www.siemens.com) sell Pocket PC-based combos.
Some cell phone/PDA combo devices use entirely different operating
systems (such as Symbian, or even the open-source Linux operating
system used on many business server computers).
Despite the variation in and among the PDA world, there’s also a
commonality — PDAs work a lot better as “connected” devices that can
talk to computers and other PDAs. And because PDAs and cell phones are
increasingly converging, or taking on the same functionality, any of the applications
that we discuss in the preceding section (“Bluetooth Mobile Phones”)
might come into play with a PDA.
In particular, the synchronization application that we discuss in that section
is especially important for PDAs because they tend to be mobile, on-the-roadagain
(thanks to Willie Nelson) extensions of a user’s main PC. Most PDAs
today require either a docking cradle (a device that you physically sit the PDA
into, which is connected via a cable to the PC), or at least a USB or another
cable to synchronize contacts, calendars, and the like with the PC. With
Bluetooth, you just need to have your PDA in the same room as the PC, with
no physical connection. You can even set up your PDA to automatically synchronize
when it’s within range of the PC.
Accordingly, we’ve begun to see Bluetooth functionality built into an increasing
number of PDAs. For example, Palm’s newest model, the Tungsten T,
includes a built-in Bluetooth system, as does HP’s Pocket PC OS iPAQ model
and Toshiba’s e740 series of Pocket PC handhelds.
You can also buy some cool Bluetooth accessories for handhelds. One big
issue with handhelds is the process of entering data onto them. Most either
have a tiny keyboard (a thumb keyboard really, which is too small for using
all your fingers and touch typing) or use a handwriting system, where you
use a stylus and write in not-quite-plain English on the screen. Both of these
systems can work really well if you spend the time required to master them,
but neither is optimal, especially if you want to do some serious data entry —
like writing a book! In that case, you really need a keyboard. You can buy one
today (with a wire) but we’ve heard around the grapevine that portable keyboards,
which use Bluetooth and are compatible with any Bluetooth PDA, will
be released in 2003. A dream come true for us — we can’t wait.
If you already own a PDA and it doesn’t have Bluetooth built in, what to do?
Do you really have to go and replace that six-month-old PDA with a new
model? Maybe not. Several manufacturers have begun selling add-on cards
for existing PDAs that enable Bluetooth communications. For example, Palm
sells the Palm Bluetooth Card ($129), which goes into the standard Secure
Digital (SD) card slot found on many Palm OS PDAs. Speaking more generally,
most PDAs have a slot like this — SD, Compact Flash, or Memory Stick — that
is most often used to expand the amount of memory in the PDA but which
can be used for other purposes. Just like the 802.11 cards in these formats
that we discuss in Chapter 5, you can now (or will soon be able to) find
Bluetooth cards in these formats.
Getting a Bluetooth card installed and set up on your PDA is really super
easy. The first thing that you might (or might not) have to do is to install
some Bluetooth software on your handheld. If this step is required, you’ll
simply put the software CD in your PC and follow the onscreen instructions,
which will guide you through the process of setting up the software. After the
software is on your PC, it should be automatically uploaded to your PDA the
next time that you sync it (using your cable or cradle). After the software is
on your PDA, just slide the Bluetooth card into the PDA. The PDA will recognize
it and might (or might not — this process is so automated you might not
notice anything happening) guide you through a quick set up wizard-type
program. That’s it — you’re Bluetooth-ed!
After you get Bluetooth hardware and software on your PDA, you’re ready to
go. By its nature, Bluetooth is constantly on the lookout for other Bluetooth
devices. When it finds something else (like your Bluetooth-equipped PC or a
Bluetooth printer) that can “talk” Bluetooth, the two devices communicate
with each other and let each other know what their capabilities are. If there’s a
match (like you’ve got a document to print, and there’s a printer nearby with
Bluetooth), a dialog box pops up on your screen through which you can do
your thing. It’s usually really easy. In some cases (like syncing mobile phone
address books with your PC), you’ll need to finesse some software on one side
or the other. We find that this is a good time to consult the owner’s manual
and/or the Web sites of the software and hardware companies involved.
In addition to cell phones, the other category of device that’s really seeing a
lot of action in the Bluetooth arena is the PDA category. In case you’re not
familiar with the concept, the term PDA (personal digital assistant) encompasses
a wide range of handheld computing devices — and therefore, PDAs
are also often referred to as handhelds.
The most common types of PDAs are the following:
PDAs that use the Palm operating system (OS): These are the granddaddies
of the PDA space. Palm’s original model, the Palm Pilot, basically created
the entire multibillion dollar PDA market back in the ’90s. Today,
Palm has been split into two separate groups: Palm, Inc. (www.palm.com),
that makes a line of PDAs; and PalmSource, Inc. (www.palmsource.com),
that develops the Palm OS. One of the reasons why the company has been
split in two is the fact that a host of other companies (such as Sony, with
its CLIÉ line [(www.sony.com/clie]) also manufacture and sell Palm OSbased
PDAs. Speaking very generally (there are a few notable exceptions),
Palm OS PDAs are the cheapest and easiest but also the least powerful (in
terms of raw computing power) of the PDAs available today.
Handhelds that use Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system: Pocket PC
handhelds are typically (though not always) a bit more expensive and
faster than Palm OS PDAs. The major manufacturers of Pocket PC systems
include Hewlett-Packard (HP; www.hp.com), Toshiba (www.toshiba.com),
and Dell (www.dell.com). In many ways, down to the user interface,
Pocket PCs tend to mirror Windows-based desktop and laptop computers
in a smaller, shrunken-down form. Pocket PC handhelds used to be considerably
more expensive than Palm handhelds, but because of a price war
among the vendors, the price differential has greatly decreased.
PDA/cell phone combinations: As we mention earlier in the
“Discovering Bluetooth Basics” section of this chapter, the line between
PDAs and cell phones becomes a bit more blurry with each passing day.
Companies such as Handspring (www.handspring.com) sell Palm OSbased
devices that are cell phones and PDAs in one, and other companies
such as Siemens (www.siemens.com) sell Pocket PC-based combos.
Some cell phone/PDA combo devices use entirely different operating
systems (such as Symbian, or even the open-source Linux operating
system used on many business server computers).
Despite the variation in and among the PDA world, there’s also a
commonality — PDAs work a lot better as “connected” devices that can
talk to computers and other PDAs. And because PDAs and cell phones are
increasingly converging, or taking on the same functionality, any of the applications
that we discuss in the preceding section (“Bluetooth Mobile Phones”)
might come into play with a PDA.
In particular, the synchronization application that we discuss in that section
is especially important for PDAs because they tend to be mobile, on-the-roadagain
(thanks to Willie Nelson) extensions of a user’s main PC. Most PDAs
today require either a docking cradle (a device that you physically sit the PDA
into, which is connected via a cable to the PC), or at least a USB or another
cable to synchronize contacts, calendars, and the like with the PC. With
Bluetooth, you just need to have your PDA in the same room as the PC, with
no physical connection. You can even set up your PDA to automatically synchronize
when it’s within range of the PC.
Accordingly, we’ve begun to see Bluetooth functionality built into an increasing
number of PDAs. For example, Palm’s newest model, the Tungsten T,
includes a built-in Bluetooth system, as does HP’s Pocket PC OS iPAQ model
and Toshiba’s e740 series of Pocket PC handhelds.
You can also buy some cool Bluetooth accessories for handhelds. One big
issue with handhelds is the process of entering data onto them. Most either
have a tiny keyboard (a thumb keyboard really, which is too small for using
all your fingers and touch typing) or use a handwriting system, where you
use a stylus and write in not-quite-plain English on the screen. Both of these
systems can work really well if you spend the time required to master them,
but neither is optimal, especially if you want to do some serious data entry —
like writing a book! In that case, you really need a keyboard. You can buy one
today (with a wire) but we’ve heard around the grapevine that portable keyboards,
which use Bluetooth and are compatible with any Bluetooth PDA, will
be released in 2003. A dream come true for us — we can’t wait.
If you already own a PDA and it doesn’t have Bluetooth built in, what to do?
Do you really have to go and replace that six-month-old PDA with a new
model? Maybe not. Several manufacturers have begun selling add-on cards
for existing PDAs that enable Bluetooth communications. For example, Palm
sells the Palm Bluetooth Card ($129), which goes into the standard Secure
Digital (SD) card slot found on many Palm OS PDAs. Speaking more generally,
most PDAs have a slot like this — SD, Compact Flash, or Memory Stick — that
is most often used to expand the amount of memory in the PDA but which
can be used for other purposes. Just like the 802.11 cards in these formats
that we discuss in Chapter 5, you can now (or will soon be able to) find
Bluetooth cards in these formats.
Getting a Bluetooth card installed and set up on your PDA is really super
easy. The first thing that you might (or might not) have to do is to install
some Bluetooth software on your handheld. If this step is required, you’ll
simply put the software CD in your PC and follow the onscreen instructions,
which will guide you through the process of setting up the software. After the
software is on your PC, it should be automatically uploaded to your PDA the
next time that you sync it (using your cable or cradle). After the software is
on your PDA, just slide the Bluetooth card into the PDA. The PDA will recognize
it and might (or might not — this process is so automated you might not
notice anything happening) guide you through a quick set up wizard-type
program. That’s it — you’re Bluetooth-ed!
After you get Bluetooth hardware and software on your PDA, you’re ready to
go. By its nature, Bluetooth is constantly on the lookout for other Bluetooth
devices. When it finds something else (like your Bluetooth-equipped PC or a
Bluetooth printer) that can “talk” Bluetooth, the two devices communicate
with each other and let each other know what their capabilities are. If there’s a
match (like you’ve got a document to print, and there’s a printer nearby with
Bluetooth), a dialog box pops up on your screen through which you can do
your thing. It’s usually really easy. In some cases (like syncing mobile phone
address books with your PC), you’ll need to finesse some software on one side
or the other. We find that this is a good time to consult the owner’s manual
and/or the Web sites of the software and hardware companies involved.
Other Bluetooth Devices
Other Bluetooth Devices
Cell phone and PDAs aren’t the only devices that can use Bluetooth, of
course. In fact, the value of Bluetooth would be considerably lessened if they
were. It’s the network effect — the value (to the user) of a networked device
that increases exponentially as the number of networked devices increases.
To use a common analogy, think about fax machines (if you can remember
them . . . we hardly ever use ours any more). The first guy with a fax machine
found it pretty useless, at least until the second person got hers. As more and
more folks got faxes, the fax machine became more useful to each one of
them because they simply had a lot more people to send faxes to (or receive
them from).
Bluetooth is the same way. Just connecting your PDA to your cell phone is kind
of cool, in a geek-chic kinda way, but it’s not going to set the world on its ear.
But when you start considering wireless headsets, printers, PCs, keyboards,
and even Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers — if you’re a surveyor,
check out Trimble’s (www.trimble.com) GPS receivers with BlueCap technology
— and the value of Bluetooth becomes much clearer.
In this section of the chapter, we discuss some of these other Bluetooth
devices.
Cell phone and PDAs aren’t the only devices that can use Bluetooth, of
course. In fact, the value of Bluetooth would be considerably lessened if they
were. It’s the network effect — the value (to the user) of a networked device
that increases exponentially as the number of networked devices increases.
To use a common analogy, think about fax machines (if you can remember
them . . . we hardly ever use ours any more). The first guy with a fax machine
found it pretty useless, at least until the second person got hers. As more and
more folks got faxes, the fax machine became more useful to each one of
them because they simply had a lot more people to send faxes to (or receive
them from).
Bluetooth is the same way. Just connecting your PDA to your cell phone is kind
of cool, in a geek-chic kinda way, but it’s not going to set the world on its ear.
But when you start considering wireless headsets, printers, PCs, keyboards,
and even Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers — if you’re a surveyor,
check out Trimble’s (www.trimble.com) GPS receivers with BlueCap technology
— and the value of Bluetooth becomes much clearer.
In this section of the chapter, we discuss some of these other Bluetooth
devices.
Printers
Printers
We talk about connecting printers to your wireless LAN in Chapter 11, but
what if you want to access your printer from all those portable devices that
don’t have wireless LAN connections built into them? Or, if you haven’t got
your printer connected to the wireless LAN, what do you do when you want
to quickly print a document that’s on your laptop? Well, why not use
Bluetooth?
You can get Bluetooth onto your printer in two ways:
Buy a printer with built-in Bluetooth. These are relatively rare as we
write but are becoming more widely available. An example of this comes
from HP (www.hp.com), with its DeskJet 995c printer ($399 list price). In
addition to connecting to laptops, PDAs (like the HP iPAQ) and other
mobile devices using Bluetooth, this Mac- and Windows-compatible
printer can connect to your PCs with a standard USB cable or by using
an IR connection (using a standard computer system called IrDA, which
stands for the Infrared Data Association). So you’ll be able to connect
just about any PC or portable device directly to this printer, with wires
or wirelessly.
Buy a Bluetooth adapter for your existing printer. Many printer manufacturers
haven’t got around to building printers with built-in Bluetooth
yet, but they do recognize the potential in the market. So they’ve
launched Bluetooth adapters that can plug into their existing lines of
computers. Epson (www.epson.com), for example, offers a Bluetooth
printer adapter for about $129 that plugs into the parallel port (this is
the other standard connection that you’ll find on printers — along with
USB) of most Epson Stylus printers.
What we really expect to see happen in the printer world while the prices for
the chips that allow Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless LAN technologies continue
to plummet — you read our minds! — is printers that have both 802.11 and
Bluetooth built into them.
We talk about connecting printers to your wireless LAN in Chapter 11, but
what if you want to access your printer from all those portable devices that
don’t have wireless LAN connections built into them? Or, if you haven’t got
your printer connected to the wireless LAN, what do you do when you want
to quickly print a document that’s on your laptop? Well, why not use
Bluetooth?
You can get Bluetooth onto your printer in two ways:
Buy a printer with built-in Bluetooth. These are relatively rare as we
write but are becoming more widely available. An example of this comes
from HP (www.hp.com), with its DeskJet 995c printer ($399 list price). In
addition to connecting to laptops, PDAs (like the HP iPAQ) and other
mobile devices using Bluetooth, this Mac- and Windows-compatible
printer can connect to your PCs with a standard USB cable or by using
an IR connection (using a standard computer system called IrDA, which
stands for the Infrared Data Association). So you’ll be able to connect
just about any PC or portable device directly to this printer, with wires
or wirelessly.
Buy a Bluetooth adapter for your existing printer. Many printer manufacturers
haven’t got around to building printers with built-in Bluetooth
yet, but they do recognize the potential in the market. So they’ve
launched Bluetooth adapters that can plug into their existing lines of
computers. Epson (www.epson.com), for example, offers a Bluetooth
printer adapter for about $129 that plugs into the parallel port (this is
the other standard connection that you’ll find on printers — along with
USB) of most Epson Stylus printers.
What we really expect to see happen in the printer world while the prices for
the chips that allow Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless LAN technologies continue
to plummet — you read our minds! — is printers that have both 802.11 and
Bluetooth built into them.
Digital cameras
Digital cameras
If you own a digital camera, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time
reaching behind your PC to connect the USB cable required to download
the pictures from the camera to your PC. It’s a real pain. And if you head over
to your parents’ house and want to download the pictures for them, you’d
better have remembered that cable, or you’ll have to wait until you get home.
And then you’ve got to e-mail all those pictures to them, which can take forever,
even on a broadband connection. (And if your parents only have a
dialup modem, it’ll take them even longer to download that huge e-mail.)
A better solution is to zap the pictures to their PC while you’re there (or to
your own computer at home, without any behind-the-desk acrobatics) using
Bluetooth. Sony’s got a solution for you (at least if you live in Japan — Sony
hasn’t released this model outside its home market yet): the Sony DSC-FX77.
(And by the way, can we just ask — what’s with Sony’s product names? All
these numbers drive us crazy.) The DSC-FX77 is a 4-megapixel camera (so you
can take some really high-resolution shots that you can blow up into nearly
poster-sized prints), and if it’s anything like the other (non-Bluetooth) Sony
digital cameras that we’ve used, it’s gotta take some great pictures. You can
find this camera on Sony’s main Web page in Japan (www.sony.co.jp).
Because this product is only currently available in Japan — and because we
can’t read Japanese, either — we can’t offer you any setup tips. Because the
camera is Bluetooth based, however, setup is probably like with all other
Bluetooth-enabled devices . . . you might need to install a driver, and it works
within range of other Bluetooth devices.
If you’ve got a baby (or you’re a budding Scorsese) and are into digital camcorders,
Sony has several models that have Bluetooth connectivity built in.
This is great for sending still pictures over to your computer, but it might not
work all that great for sending long videos. We’d love to see 802.11 get put
into camcorders because the sheer size of video files means a long download
with a slower wireless link. These cameras can be found on Sony’s North
American Web page (in English, even!) at www.sony.com.
Keyboards and meeses (that’s plural
for mouse!)
Wireless keyboards and mice have been around for a while (Danny’s been
swearing by his Logitech wireless mouse for years and years), but they’ve been
a bit clunky. In order to get them working, you had to buy a pair of radio transceivers
to plug into your computer, and then you had to worry about interference
between your mouse and other devices in your home. With Bluetooth,
things get a lot easier. If your PC (or PDA for that matter) has Bluetooth built in,
you don’t need to buy any special adapters or transceivers — just put the batteries
in your keyboard and mouse and start working. (You probably won’t
even need to install any special software or drivers on your PC to make this
work.) Check out the Bluetooth keyboard from the Korean company Bluelogic
(www.bluelogic.co.kr) — it’s a very cool device that should be available by
the time you read this (it was announced but not yet being shipped as we
wrote).
If your PC is not already Bluetooth equipped, you might consider buying
Microsoft’s Wireless Optical Desktop (www.microsoft.com/hardware/
keyboard/wodbt_info.asp; about $160). This system includes both a
full-function wireless keyboard (one of those cool Microsoft models with
a ton of extra buttons for special functions such as audio volume, MP3 fast
forward/rewind, and special keys for Microsoft Office programs), a wireless
optical mouse (no mouse ball to clean — as an aside, if you haven’t used an
optical mouse yet, you really need to try one!), and a Bluetooth adapter that
plugs into one of your PC’s USB ports. This adapter turns your PC into a
Bluetooth PC. In other words, it can be used with any Bluetooth device, not
just with the keyboard and mouse that come in the box with it. So this kit is a
great way to unwire your mouse and keyboard and get a Bluetooth PC, all in
one fell swoop.
The Wireless Optical Desktop is really easy to set up. You just need to plug
the receiver into a USB port on the back of your computer and install the keyboard
and mouse driver software. (This isn’t really even a Bluetooth requirement,
but rather, it allows you to use all the special buttons on the keyboard
and extra mouse buttons on the mouse.) You do, however, have to have an
up-to-date version of Windows XP (which you can update by using XP’s builtin
software update program) or a Macintosh with the latest version of OS X.
If you own a digital camera, you’ve probably spent a fair amount of time
reaching behind your PC to connect the USB cable required to download
the pictures from the camera to your PC. It’s a real pain. And if you head over
to your parents’ house and want to download the pictures for them, you’d
better have remembered that cable, or you’ll have to wait until you get home.
And then you’ve got to e-mail all those pictures to them, which can take forever,
even on a broadband connection. (And if your parents only have a
dialup modem, it’ll take them even longer to download that huge e-mail.)
A better solution is to zap the pictures to their PC while you’re there (or to
your own computer at home, without any behind-the-desk acrobatics) using
Bluetooth. Sony’s got a solution for you (at least if you live in Japan — Sony
hasn’t released this model outside its home market yet): the Sony DSC-FX77.
(And by the way, can we just ask — what’s with Sony’s product names? All
these numbers drive us crazy.) The DSC-FX77 is a 4-megapixel camera (so you
can take some really high-resolution shots that you can blow up into nearly
poster-sized prints), and if it’s anything like the other (non-Bluetooth) Sony
digital cameras that we’ve used, it’s gotta take some great pictures. You can
find this camera on Sony’s main Web page in Japan (www.sony.co.jp).
Because this product is only currently available in Japan — and because we
can’t read Japanese, either — we can’t offer you any setup tips. Because the
camera is Bluetooth based, however, setup is probably like with all other
Bluetooth-enabled devices . . . you might need to install a driver, and it works
within range of other Bluetooth devices.
If you’ve got a baby (or you’re a budding Scorsese) and are into digital camcorders,
Sony has several models that have Bluetooth connectivity built in.
This is great for sending still pictures over to your computer, but it might not
work all that great for sending long videos. We’d love to see 802.11 get put
into camcorders because the sheer size of video files means a long download
with a slower wireless link. These cameras can be found on Sony’s North
American Web page (in English, even!) at www.sony.com.
Keyboards and meeses (that’s plural
for mouse!)
Wireless keyboards and mice have been around for a while (Danny’s been
swearing by his Logitech wireless mouse for years and years), but they’ve been
a bit clunky. In order to get them working, you had to buy a pair of radio transceivers
to plug into your computer, and then you had to worry about interference
between your mouse and other devices in your home. With Bluetooth,
things get a lot easier. If your PC (or PDA for that matter) has Bluetooth built in,
you don’t need to buy any special adapters or transceivers — just put the batteries
in your keyboard and mouse and start working. (You probably won’t
even need to install any special software or drivers on your PC to make this
work.) Check out the Bluetooth keyboard from the Korean company Bluelogic
(www.bluelogic.co.kr) — it’s a very cool device that should be available by
the time you read this (it was announced but not yet being shipped as we
wrote).
If your PC is not already Bluetooth equipped, you might consider buying
Microsoft’s Wireless Optical Desktop (www.microsoft.com/hardware/
keyboard/wodbt_info.asp; about $160). This system includes both a
full-function wireless keyboard (one of those cool Microsoft models with
a ton of extra buttons for special functions such as audio volume, MP3 fast
forward/rewind, and special keys for Microsoft Office programs), a wireless
optical mouse (no mouse ball to clean — as an aside, if you haven’t used an
optical mouse yet, you really need to try one!), and a Bluetooth adapter that
plugs into one of your PC’s USB ports. This adapter turns your PC into a
Bluetooth PC. In other words, it can be used with any Bluetooth device, not
just with the keyboard and mouse that come in the box with it. So this kit is a
great way to unwire your mouse and keyboard and get a Bluetooth PC, all in
one fell swoop.
The Wireless Optical Desktop is really easy to set up. You just need to plug
the receiver into a USB port on the back of your computer and install the keyboard
and mouse driver software. (This isn’t really even a Bluetooth requirement,
but rather, it allows you to use all the special buttons on the keyboard
and extra mouse buttons on the mouse.) You do, however, have to have an
up-to-date version of Windows XP (which you can update by using XP’s builtin
software update program) or a Macintosh with the latest version of OS X.
Bluetooth adapters
Bluetooth adapters
If your PC doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth (and most don’t, although a growing
number of laptop computers, such as Apple’s 17" G4 PowerBook — Pat really
wants one of these — and some Toshiba and Sony VAIO laptops do ship with
built-in Bluetooth), you’ll need some sort of adapter, just like you’ll need an
802.11 adapter to connect your PC to your wireless LAN. The most common
way to get Bluetooth onto your PC is by using a USB adapter (or dongle).
These compact devices (about the size of your pinkie — unless you’re in the
NBA, in which case, we’ll say half a pinkie) plug directly into a USB port and
are self-contained Bluetooth adapters. In other words, they need no external
power supply or antenna. Figure 15-1 shows the D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter.
Figure 15-1:
D-Link’s
USB
Bluetooth
adapter is
tiny —
about the
size of a
small pack
of gum.
Because Bluetooth is a relatively low-speed connection (remember the maximum
speed is only 732 Kbps), USB connections — which are too slow for
high-speed wireless LAN adapters like 802.11a and g adapters — are always
going to be fast enough for Bluetooth. So you don’t need to worry about
having an available Ethernet, PC Card, or other high-speed connection available
on your PC.
(Un)plugging into Bluetooth access points
Although most people use Bluetooth to connect
to devices in a peer-to-peer fashion —
connecting two devices directly together using
a Bluetooth airlink connection — there might
be situations where you want to be able to connect
Bluetooth devices to your wireless home
network itself (or to the Internet through your
wireless home network). Enter the Bluetooth
access point. Like the wireless access points
that we discuss throughout the book, Bluetooth
access points provide a means of connecting
multiple Bluetooth devices to a wired network
connection.
Bluetooth APs, like Belkin’s Bluetooth Access
Point ($169), have a high-powered Bluetooth
radio system (meaning they can reach as far as
100 meters, although your range will be limited
by the range of the devices that you’re connecting
to the AP, which is typically much
shorter) and connect to your wireless home network
with a wired Ethernet connection. Belkin’s
AP also includes a USB print server, so you can
connect any standard USB printer to the AP and
share it with both Bluetooth devices and any
device connected to your wireless home network
(including 802.11 devices — as long as
your wireless home network is connected to the
same Ethernet network).
Moving forward, we expect to see access points
with both 802.11 and Bluetooth functionality built
in — multipurpose access points that can connect
to any wireless device in your home.
Because many people have more USB devices than USB ports on their computers,
they often use USB hubs, which connect to one of the USB ports on
the back of the computer and connect multiple USB devices through the hub
to that port. When you’re using USB devices (such as Bluetooth adapters)
that require power from the USB port, it’s best to plug them directly into the
PC itself and not into a hub. If you need to use a hub, make sure that it’s a
powered hub (with its own cord running to a wall outlet or power strip).
Insufficient power from an unpowered hub is perhaps the most common
cause of USB problems.
If you’ve got a lot of USB devices, using a USB hub is really simple. We’ve
never seen one that even required any special software to be loaded. Just
plug the hub (use a standard USB cable — there should be one in the box
with the hub) into one of the USB ports on the back of your PC. If it’s a powered
hub (which we recommend), plug the power cord into your power strip
and into the back of the hub (there’ll be a designated power outlet there),
and you’re ready to go! Easy as can be. Now you can plug any USB device that
you’ve got (keyboard, mouse, digital camera, printer, you name it) into the
hub and away you go.
Street prices for these USB Bluetooth adapters generally run under a hundred
dollars, and you can find them at most computer stores (both online and the
real brick-and-mortar store down the street). Vendors include companies
such as D-Link (www.dlink.com), Belkin (www.belkin.com), and Sony
(www.sony.com).
Going Wireless Away from Home
In This Chapter
Discovering public hot spots
Tools of the hot spot trade
Getting espresso and Internet at the same place
Connecting wirelessly on the road
Checking out what’s coming soon
Throughout Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, we focus — no big
surprise here — on wireless networks located within your home. But
wireless networks aren’t just for the house. For example, many businesses
have adopted wireless networking technologies in order to provide network
connections for workers roaming throughout offices, conference rooms, and
factory floors. And just about every big university has begun to build (or has
already completed, in hundreds of cases) a campus-wide wireless network
(CAN) that enables students, faculty, and staff to connect to the campus network
(and the Internet) from just about every nook and cranny on campus.
These networks are great and very useful if you happen to work or teach or
study at a business or school that’s got a wireless network. But you don’t
need to be in one of these locations to take advantage of your wireless networking
equipment. You can find literally thousands of hot spots (places
where you can log onto Wi-Fi networks) across the United States (and the
world, for that matter) where you can connect your laptop or handheld computer
to the Internet via wireless local area network (LAN) technologies.
In this chapter, we give you some general background on public hot spots,
and we discuss the various types of free and for-pay networks out there. We
also talk about tools that you can use to find a hot spot when you’re out of
the house. Finally, we talk in some detail about some of the bigger for-pay hot
spot providers out there and how you can get on their networks. The key
thing to remember about hot spots — the really cool part — is that they use
802.11 wireless networking equipment. In other words, they use the same
kind of equipment that you use in your wireless home network, so you can
take basically any wireless device in your home (as long as it’s portable
enough to lug around) and use it to connect to a wireless hot spot.
Discovering public hot spots
Tools of the hot spot trade
Getting espresso and Internet at the same place
Connecting wirelessly on the road
Checking out what’s coming soon
Throughout Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, we focus — no big
surprise here — on wireless networks located within your home. But
wireless networks aren’t just for the house. For example, many businesses
have adopted wireless networking technologies in order to provide network
connections for workers roaming throughout offices, conference rooms, and
factory floors. And just about every big university has begun to build (or has
already completed, in hundreds of cases) a campus-wide wireless network
(CAN) that enables students, faculty, and staff to connect to the campus network
(and the Internet) from just about every nook and cranny on campus.
These networks are great and very useful if you happen to work or teach or
study at a business or school that’s got a wireless network. But you don’t
need to be in one of these locations to take advantage of your wireless networking
equipment. You can find literally thousands of hot spots (places
where you can log onto Wi-Fi networks) across the United States (and the
world, for that matter) where you can connect your laptop or handheld computer
to the Internet via wireless local area network (LAN) technologies.
In this chapter, we give you some general background on public hot spots,
and we discuss the various types of free and for-pay networks out there. We
also talk about tools that you can use to find a hot spot when you’re out of
the house. Finally, we talk in some detail about some of the bigger for-pay hot
spot providers out there and how you can get on their networks. The key
thing to remember about hot spots — the really cool part — is that they use
802.11 wireless networking equipment. In other words, they use the same
kind of equipment that you use in your wireless home network, so you can
take basically any wireless device in your home (as long as it’s portable
enough to lug around) and use it to connect to a wireless hot spot.
Discovering Public Hot Spots
Discovering Public Hot Spots
A wide variety of people and organizations have begun to provide hot spot
services, ranging from individuals who have opened up their home wireless
networks to neighbors and strangers to multinational telecommunications
service providers who have built nation- or worldwide hot spot networks
containing many hundreds of access points. There’s an in-between here, too.
Perhaps the prototypical hot spot operator is the hip (or wannabe hip) urban
cafe with a digital subscriber line (DSL) and an access point (AP) in the
corner. In Figure 16-1, you can see a sample configuration of APs in an airport
concourse, which is a popular location for hot spots because of travelers’
downtime when waiting for flights or delays.
Virtually all hot spot operators use the 802.11b standard for their hot spot
access points — we don’t know of a single one anywhere in the world that
uses the newer standards. This is good because the majority of wireless networking
equipment in use today uses this standard. Note: If your laptop or
handheld computer has an 802.11a-only network adapter in it, you won’t be
able to connect these hot spot operator’s networks. If you use 802.11g equipment,
you should be able to connect because 802.11g equipment is backward
compatible with 802.11b. Head to Chapter 2 for a refresher on the 802.11
Wi-Fi standards.
Of the myriad reasons why someone (or some company) might open up a hot
spot location, the most common that we’ve seen include the following:
In a spirit of community-mindedness: Many hot spot operators strongly
believe in the concept of a connected Internet community, and they
want to do their part by providing a hop-on point for friends, neighbors,
and even passers-by to get online.
As a municipal amenity: Not only individuals want to create a connected
community. Many towns, cities, boroughs, and villages have begun
exploring the possibility of building municipality-wide Wi-Fi networks.
There’s a cost associated with this, of course, but they see this cost as
being less than the benefit that the community will receive. For example,
many towns are looking at an openly accessible “downtown Wi-Fi network”
as a way of attracting business (and businesspeople) into downtown
areas that have suffered because of businesses moving to the suburbs.
A way to attract customers: Many cafes and other public gathering
spots have installed free-to-use hot spots as a means of getting customers
to come in the door and to stay longer. These businesses don’t
charge for the hot spot usage, but they figure that you’ll buy more
double espressos if you can sit in a comfy chair and surf the Web while
you’re drinking your coffee.
As a business in and of itself: Most of the larger hot spot providers have
made public wireless LAN access their core business. They see (and we
agree with them) that hot spot access is a great tool for traveling businesspeople,
mobile workers (such as sales folks and field techs), and the like.
They’ve built their businesses based around the assumption that these
people (or their companies) will pay for Wi-Fi access mainly because of the
benefits that a broadband connection offers them compared with the
dialup modem connections that they’ve been traditionally forced to use
while on the road.
Another group of hot spot operators exists that we like to call the unwilling
(or unwitting!) hot spot operators. These are often regular Joes who have
built wireless home networks but haven’t activated any of the security measures
that we discuss in Chapter 10. Their access points have been left wide
open, and their neighbors (or people sitting on the park bench across the
street) are taking advantage of this open access point to do some free Web
surfing. Businesses, too, fall into this category: You’d really be shocked how
many businesses have access points that are unsecured — and in many
cases, that their IT staff doesn’t even know about. It’s all too common for a
department to install its own access point (a rogue access point) without
telling the IT staff that they’ve done so.
We tend to divide hot spot operators into two categories: free networks
(freenets) that let anyone associate with the hot spot and get access without
paying; and for-pay hot spots that require users to set up an account and pay
per use or a monthly (or yearly) fee for access. In the following sections, we
talk a bit about these two types of operators.
A wide variety of people and organizations have begun to provide hot spot
services, ranging from individuals who have opened up their home wireless
networks to neighbors and strangers to multinational telecommunications
service providers who have built nation- or worldwide hot spot networks
containing many hundreds of access points. There’s an in-between here, too.
Perhaps the prototypical hot spot operator is the hip (or wannabe hip) urban
cafe with a digital subscriber line (DSL) and an access point (AP) in the
corner. In Figure 16-1, you can see a sample configuration of APs in an airport
concourse, which is a popular location for hot spots because of travelers’
downtime when waiting for flights or delays.
Virtually all hot spot operators use the 802.11b standard for their hot spot
access points — we don’t know of a single one anywhere in the world that
uses the newer standards. This is good because the majority of wireless networking
equipment in use today uses this standard. Note: If your laptop or
handheld computer has an 802.11a-only network adapter in it, you won’t be
able to connect these hot spot operator’s networks. If you use 802.11g equipment,
you should be able to connect because 802.11g equipment is backward
compatible with 802.11b. Head to Chapter 2 for a refresher on the 802.11
Wi-Fi standards.
Of the myriad reasons why someone (or some company) might open up a hot
spot location, the most common that we’ve seen include the following:
In a spirit of community-mindedness: Many hot spot operators strongly
believe in the concept of a connected Internet community, and they
want to do their part by providing a hop-on point for friends, neighbors,
and even passers-by to get online.
As a municipal amenity: Not only individuals want to create a connected
community. Many towns, cities, boroughs, and villages have begun
exploring the possibility of building municipality-wide Wi-Fi networks.
There’s a cost associated with this, of course, but they see this cost as
being less than the benefit that the community will receive. For example,
many towns are looking at an openly accessible “downtown Wi-Fi network”
as a way of attracting business (and businesspeople) into downtown
areas that have suffered because of businesses moving to the suburbs.
A way to attract customers: Many cafes and other public gathering
spots have installed free-to-use hot spots as a means of getting customers
to come in the door and to stay longer. These businesses don’t
charge for the hot spot usage, but they figure that you’ll buy more
double espressos if you can sit in a comfy chair and surf the Web while
you’re drinking your coffee.
As a business in and of itself: Most of the larger hot spot providers have
made public wireless LAN access their core business. They see (and we
agree with them) that hot spot access is a great tool for traveling businesspeople,
mobile workers (such as sales folks and field techs), and the like.
They’ve built their businesses based around the assumption that these
people (or their companies) will pay for Wi-Fi access mainly because of the
benefits that a broadband connection offers them compared with the
dialup modem connections that they’ve been traditionally forced to use
while on the road.
Another group of hot spot operators exists that we like to call the unwilling
(or unwitting!) hot spot operators. These are often regular Joes who have
built wireless home networks but haven’t activated any of the security measures
that we discuss in Chapter 10. Their access points have been left wide
open, and their neighbors (or people sitting on the park bench across the
street) are taking advantage of this open access point to do some free Web
surfing. Businesses, too, fall into this category: You’d really be shocked how
many businesses have access points that are unsecured — and in many
cases, that their IT staff doesn’t even know about. It’s all too common for a
department to install its own access point (a rogue access point) without
telling the IT staff that they’ve done so.
We tend to divide hot spot operators into two categories: free networks
(freenets) that let anyone associate with the hot spot and get access without
paying; and for-pay hot spots that require users to set up an account and pay
per use or a monthly (or yearly) fee for access. In the following sections, we
talk a bit about these two types of operators.
Freenets and open access points
Freenets and open access points
Most open access points are just that: individual access points that have
been purposely (or mistakenly) left open for others to use. Because this is
essentially an ad hoc network created by individuals — without any particular
organization behind them — these open hot spots can be hard to find.
(Note: This is different than an ad hoc network that doesn’t use an access
point, as we describe in Chapter 7.) In some areas, the owners of these hot
spots are part of an organized group, which makes these hot spots easier to
find. But in other locations, you’ll need to do some Web research and/or use
some special programs on your laptop or handheld computer to find an open
access point.
The more organized groups of open access points (often called freenets)
can be found in many larger cities. See a listing of the Web sites of some of
the most prominent of these freenets in Chapter 20. A few of the bigger and
better-organized ones include
NYCwireless (www.nycwireless.net): A freenet serving Manhattan,
Brooklyn, and other areas of the metro New York City region
Bay Area Wireless Users Group (www.bawug.org): A freenet in the San
Francisco Bay area
AustinWireless (www.austinwireless.net): Serving the Austin, Texas
region
Many freenets are affiliated with larger, nation- or even worldwide efforts.
Two of the most prominent are FreeNetworks.org (www.freenetworks.org)
and the Wireless Node Database Project (www.nodedb.com). These organizations
run Web sites and provide a means of communications for owners of
hot spots and potential users to get together.
These aren’t the only sources of information on open hot spots. The folks at
802.11 Planet (one of our favorite sources of industry news) run the Web site
802.11Hotspots.com (www.80211hotspots.com) that lets you search through
its huge worldwide database of hot spots. You can search by city, state, or
country. 802.11Hotspots.com includes both free and for-pay hot spots, so it’s
a pretty comprehensive list.
You’re going to have a lot more luck finding freenets and free public access
points in urban areas. The nature of 802.11 technologies is such that most offthe-
shelf access points are only going to reach a few hundred feet with any
kind of throughput. So when you get out of the city and into the suburbs and
rural areas, the chances are that an access point in someone’s house isn’t
going to reach any place that you’re going to be . . . unless that house is right
next door to a park or other public space. There’s just a density issue to overcome.
In a city, where there might be numerous access points on a single
block, you’re just going to have much better luck getting online.
Although these lists are pretty good, none of them are truly comprehensive
because many individuals out there who have open hot spots haven’t submitted
them. If you’re looking for a hot spot and haven’t found it through one of
these (or one of the many, many others online) Web sites, you might try using
one of the hot spot-finding programs that we discuss in the upcoming section
“Tools for Finding Hot Spots.”
Some of the hot spots that you find using these tools, or some of the online
Web pages that collect the reports of people using these tools, are indeed
open, albeit unintentionally. As we discuss in Chapter 10, a whole wireless
LAN subculture is out there — the wardrivers — who recreationally find open
access points that should be closed. (Check out www.wifimaps.com for
some results of their handiwork.) We’re not going to get involved in a discussion
of the morality or ethics of using these access points to get yourself
online. We would say, however, that some people think that locating and
using an open access point is a bad thing, akin to stealing. So if you’re going
to hop on someone’s access point and you don’t know for sure that you’re
meant to do that, you’re on your own.
Most open access points are just that: individual access points that have
been purposely (or mistakenly) left open for others to use. Because this is
essentially an ad hoc network created by individuals — without any particular
organization behind them — these open hot spots can be hard to find.
(Note: This is different than an ad hoc network that doesn’t use an access
point, as we describe in Chapter 7.) In some areas, the owners of these hot
spots are part of an organized group, which makes these hot spots easier to
find. But in other locations, you’ll need to do some Web research and/or use
some special programs on your laptop or handheld computer to find an open
access point.
The more organized groups of open access points (often called freenets)
can be found in many larger cities. See a listing of the Web sites of some of
the most prominent of these freenets in Chapter 20. A few of the bigger and
better-organized ones include
NYCwireless (www.nycwireless.net): A freenet serving Manhattan,
Brooklyn, and other areas of the metro New York City region
Bay Area Wireless Users Group (www.bawug.org): A freenet in the San
Francisco Bay area
AustinWireless (www.austinwireless.net): Serving the Austin, Texas
region
Many freenets are affiliated with larger, nation- or even worldwide efforts.
Two of the most prominent are FreeNetworks.org (www.freenetworks.org)
and the Wireless Node Database Project (www.nodedb.com). These organizations
run Web sites and provide a means of communications for owners of
hot spots and potential users to get together.
These aren’t the only sources of information on open hot spots. The folks at
802.11 Planet (one of our favorite sources of industry news) run the Web site
802.11Hotspots.com (www.80211hotspots.com) that lets you search through
its huge worldwide database of hot spots. You can search by city, state, or
country. 802.11Hotspots.com includes both free and for-pay hot spots, so it’s
a pretty comprehensive list.
You’re going to have a lot more luck finding freenets and free public access
points in urban areas. The nature of 802.11 technologies is such that most offthe-
shelf access points are only going to reach a few hundred feet with any
kind of throughput. So when you get out of the city and into the suburbs and
rural areas, the chances are that an access point in someone’s house isn’t
going to reach any place that you’re going to be . . . unless that house is right
next door to a park or other public space. There’s just a density issue to overcome.
In a city, where there might be numerous access points on a single
block, you’re just going to have much better luck getting online.
Although these lists are pretty good, none of them are truly comprehensive
because many individuals out there who have open hot spots haven’t submitted
them. If you’re looking for a hot spot and haven’t found it through one of
these (or one of the many, many others online) Web sites, you might try using
one of the hot spot-finding programs that we discuss in the upcoming section
“Tools for Finding Hot Spots.”
Some of the hot spots that you find using these tools, or some of the online
Web pages that collect the reports of people using these tools, are indeed
open, albeit unintentionally. As we discuss in Chapter 10, a whole wireless
LAN subculture is out there — the wardrivers — who recreationally find open
access points that should be closed. (Check out www.wifimaps.com for
some results of their handiwork.) We’re not going to get involved in a discussion
of the morality or ethics of using these access points to get yourself
online. We would say, however, that some people think that locating and
using an open access point is a bad thing, akin to stealing. So if you’re going
to hop on someone’s access point and you don’t know for sure that you’re
meant to do that, you’re on your own.
For-pay services
For-pay services
Freenets are cool. And, although we think that freenets are an awesome concept,
if you’ve got an essential business document to e-mail or a PowerPoint
presentation that you’ve absolutely got to download from the company
server before you get to your meeting, you might not want to rely solely on
the generosity of strangers. You might even be willing to pay to get a good,
reliable, secure connection to the Internet for these business (or important
personal) purposes.
And trust us: Someone out there is thinking about how he can help you with
that need. In fact, a bunch of companies are focusing on exactly that business.
It’s the nature of capitalism, right? You’ve got a need that you’re willing
to part with some hard-earned cash to have requited. And some company is
going to come along, fulfill that need, and separate you from your money.
The concluding sections of the chapter talk about a few of these companies,
but for now, we just talk in generalities. Commercial hot spot providers are
mainly focused on the business market, providing access to mobile workers
and road-warrior types. And many of these providers also offer relatively inexpensive
plans (by using either prepaid calling cards or pay-by-the-use models)
that you might use for non-business (your personal) connectivity. (At least if
you’re like us, and you can’t go a day without checking your mail or reading
DBR — www.dukebasketballreport.com — even when on vacation.)
Unless you’re living in a city or town right near a hot spot provider, you’re probably
not going to be able to pick up a hot spot as your primary ISP, although in
some places (often smaller towns), ISPs are using Wi-Fi as the primary pipe to
their customers’ homes. You can expect to find for-pay hot spot access in a lot
of areas outside the home. The most common include the following:
Hotel lobbies and rooms
Coffee shops and Internet cafes
Airport gates and lounges
Office building lobbies
Train stations
Meeting facilities
Basically, anywhere that folks armed with a laptop or a handheld computer
might find themselves, there’s a potential for a hot spot operator to build a
business.
296 Part IV: Using a Wireless Network
Opening up to your neighbors
We’re not talking about group therapy or wild
hot tub parties. Wireless networks can carry
through walls, across yards, and potentially
around the neighborhood. Although wireless
LANs were designed from the start for in-building
use, the technology can be used in outdoors
settings. For example, most college campuses
are now wired with dozens or hundreds of wireless
access points so that students, staff, and
professors can access the Internet from just
about anywhere on campus. At UC San Diego,
for example, freshmen are outfitted with wireless
personal digital assistants (PDAs) to schedule
classes, send e-mails, and instant messages,
and even find their friends at the student center
(by using a locator program written by a student).
Many folks are adapting this concept
when it comes to access in their neighborhood,
setting up community wireless LANs.
Some creators of these community LANs have
taken the openness of the Internet to heart and
have opened up their access points to any and
all takers. There’s even an Internet subculture
with Web sites and chalk markings on sidewalks
identifying these open access points. In other
areas, where broadband access is scarce,
neighbors pool money to buy a T1 or other
business-class, high-speed Internet line to
share it wirelessly.
We think that both of these concepts make a lot
of sense, but we do have one warning: Many
Internet service providers (ISPs) don’t like the
idea of you sharing your Internet connection
without them getting a piece of the action.
Beware that you might have to pay for a more
expensive commercial ISP line. Before you
share your Internet connection, check your
ISP’s Terms of Service (TOS) or look at the listing
of wireless-friendly ISPs on the Electronic
Frontier Foundation’s Web page (www.eff.
org). The same is true of DSL and cable modem
providers. Your usage agreement with them
basically says that you won’t do this, and they’re
starting to charge high-use fees to lines that
have extranormal traffic (that is, those lines that
seem like there are a bunch of people on the
broadband line sharing the connection).
Pretty soon, you’ll even be able to plug into a Wi-Fi network on an airplane.
Boeing and Cisco have been teaming up to get wireless Internet access on
passenger planes. In fact, they’ve already got one plane — a Lufthansa 747
that makes regular trips between Frankfurt, Germany and Washington, DC —
already outfitted with the system. The system connects to a satellite ISP and
gives passengers a high-speed connection (up to 1 Mbps) in any seat on the
plane (even back in 52b, that awful middle seat by the lavatory!). Here’s a
cool aside about this system: On the inaugural flight, a reporter wrote and
submitted his story entirely online while flying on the plane.
The single biggest issue that’s been holding back the hot spot industry so far
(keeping it as a huge future trend instead of a use-it-anywhere-today reality)
has been the issue of roaming. As of this writing, no one hot spot operator
has anything close to ubiquitous coverage. Instead, dozens of different hot
spot operators, of different sizes, operate in competition with each other. As
a user, perhaps a sales person who’s traveling across town to several different
clients in one day, you might find yourself running into hot spots from
three or four different hot spot providers — and needing accounts from three
or four separate providers to get online with each.
This is a lot different, of course, from the cell phone industry, in which you
can pretty much take your phone anywhere and make calls. The cell phone
providers have some elaborate roaming arrangements in place that allow
them to bill each other (and in the end, bill you, the user) for these calls. Hot
spot service providers haven’t quite reached this point. However, here are a
couple of trends that will help bring about some true hot spot roaming:
Companies, such as Boingo Wireless, are entering the market. Boingo
(founded by Sky Dayton, who also founded the huge ISP EarthLink),
doesn’t operate any of its own hot spots but instead has partnered with
a huge range of other hot spot operators from little mom-and-pop hot
spot operators to big operations such as Wayport. Boingo provides all
the billing and account management for end users. Thus, a Boingo customer
can go to any Boingo partner’s hot spot, log on, and get online. (We
talk about both Boingo and Wayport in more detail later in the chapter.)
Cell phone companies are getting into the hot spot business. Led by
T-Mobile, cell phone companies are beginning to buy into the hot spot
concept, setting up widespread networks of hot spots in their cellular
phone territories. Although these networks aren’t yet ubiquitous —
the coverage isn’t anywhere close to that of the cellular phone networks
yet — it is getting better by the day.
Besides improving coverage and solving the roaming problem, commercial
hot spot providers are also beginning to look at solutions that provide a
higher grade of access — offering business class hot spot services, in other
words. For example, they are exploring special hot spot access points and
related gear that can offer different tiers of speeds (you could pay more to get
a faster connection) or that can offer secure connections to corporate networks
(so that you can safely log onto the office network to get work files).
In the next sections of this chapter, we talk about some of the most prominent
commercial hot spot providers operating in the United States. We’re not
going to spend any time talking about the smaller local hot spot providers
out there, although many of them are hooking up with companies like Boingo.
We’re not down on these smaller providers, but we’re aiming for the maximum
bang for our writing buck. So if you’ve got a local favorite that meets
your needs, go for it!
Freenets are cool. And, although we think that freenets are an awesome concept,
if you’ve got an essential business document to e-mail or a PowerPoint
presentation that you’ve absolutely got to download from the company
server before you get to your meeting, you might not want to rely solely on
the generosity of strangers. You might even be willing to pay to get a good,
reliable, secure connection to the Internet for these business (or important
personal) purposes.
And trust us: Someone out there is thinking about how he can help you with
that need. In fact, a bunch of companies are focusing on exactly that business.
It’s the nature of capitalism, right? You’ve got a need that you’re willing
to part with some hard-earned cash to have requited. And some company is
going to come along, fulfill that need, and separate you from your money.
The concluding sections of the chapter talk about a few of these companies,
but for now, we just talk in generalities. Commercial hot spot providers are
mainly focused on the business market, providing access to mobile workers
and road-warrior types. And many of these providers also offer relatively inexpensive
plans (by using either prepaid calling cards or pay-by-the-use models)
that you might use for non-business (your personal) connectivity. (At least if
you’re like us, and you can’t go a day without checking your mail or reading
DBR — www.dukebasketballreport.com — even when on vacation.)
Unless you’re living in a city or town right near a hot spot provider, you’re probably
not going to be able to pick up a hot spot as your primary ISP, although in
some places (often smaller towns), ISPs are using Wi-Fi as the primary pipe to
their customers’ homes. You can expect to find for-pay hot spot access in a lot
of areas outside the home. The most common include the following:
Hotel lobbies and rooms
Coffee shops and Internet cafes
Airport gates and lounges
Office building lobbies
Train stations
Meeting facilities
Basically, anywhere that folks armed with a laptop or a handheld computer
might find themselves, there’s a potential for a hot spot operator to build a
business.
296 Part IV: Using a Wireless Network
Opening up to your neighbors
We’re not talking about group therapy or wild
hot tub parties. Wireless networks can carry
through walls, across yards, and potentially
around the neighborhood. Although wireless
LANs were designed from the start for in-building
use, the technology can be used in outdoors
settings. For example, most college campuses
are now wired with dozens or hundreds of wireless
access points so that students, staff, and
professors can access the Internet from just
about anywhere on campus. At UC San Diego,
for example, freshmen are outfitted with wireless
personal digital assistants (PDAs) to schedule
classes, send e-mails, and instant messages,
and even find their friends at the student center
(by using a locator program written by a student).
Many folks are adapting this concept
when it comes to access in their neighborhood,
setting up community wireless LANs.
Some creators of these community LANs have
taken the openness of the Internet to heart and
have opened up their access points to any and
all takers. There’s even an Internet subculture
with Web sites and chalk markings on sidewalks
identifying these open access points. In other
areas, where broadband access is scarce,
neighbors pool money to buy a T1 or other
business-class, high-speed Internet line to
share it wirelessly.
We think that both of these concepts make a lot
of sense, but we do have one warning: Many
Internet service providers (ISPs) don’t like the
idea of you sharing your Internet connection
without them getting a piece of the action.
Beware that you might have to pay for a more
expensive commercial ISP line. Before you
share your Internet connection, check your
ISP’s Terms of Service (TOS) or look at the listing
of wireless-friendly ISPs on the Electronic
Frontier Foundation’s Web page (www.eff.
org). The same is true of DSL and cable modem
providers. Your usage agreement with them
basically says that you won’t do this, and they’re
starting to charge high-use fees to lines that
have extranormal traffic (that is, those lines that
seem like there are a bunch of people on the
broadband line sharing the connection).
Pretty soon, you’ll even be able to plug into a Wi-Fi network on an airplane.
Boeing and Cisco have been teaming up to get wireless Internet access on
passenger planes. In fact, they’ve already got one plane — a Lufthansa 747
that makes regular trips between Frankfurt, Germany and Washington, DC —
already outfitted with the system. The system connects to a satellite ISP and
gives passengers a high-speed connection (up to 1 Mbps) in any seat on the
plane (even back in 52b, that awful middle seat by the lavatory!). Here’s a
cool aside about this system: On the inaugural flight, a reporter wrote and
submitted his story entirely online while flying on the plane.
The single biggest issue that’s been holding back the hot spot industry so far
(keeping it as a huge future trend instead of a use-it-anywhere-today reality)
has been the issue of roaming. As of this writing, no one hot spot operator
has anything close to ubiquitous coverage. Instead, dozens of different hot
spot operators, of different sizes, operate in competition with each other. As
a user, perhaps a sales person who’s traveling across town to several different
clients in one day, you might find yourself running into hot spots from
three or four different hot spot providers — and needing accounts from three
or four separate providers to get online with each.
This is a lot different, of course, from the cell phone industry, in which you
can pretty much take your phone anywhere and make calls. The cell phone
providers have some elaborate roaming arrangements in place that allow
them to bill each other (and in the end, bill you, the user) for these calls. Hot
spot service providers haven’t quite reached this point. However, here are a
couple of trends that will help bring about some true hot spot roaming:
Companies, such as Boingo Wireless, are entering the market. Boingo
(founded by Sky Dayton, who also founded the huge ISP EarthLink),
doesn’t operate any of its own hot spots but instead has partnered with
a huge range of other hot spot operators from little mom-and-pop hot
spot operators to big operations such as Wayport. Boingo provides all
the billing and account management for end users. Thus, a Boingo customer
can go to any Boingo partner’s hot spot, log on, and get online. (We
talk about both Boingo and Wayport in more detail later in the chapter.)
Cell phone companies are getting into the hot spot business. Led by
T-Mobile, cell phone companies are beginning to buy into the hot spot
concept, setting up widespread networks of hot spots in their cellular
phone territories. Although these networks aren’t yet ubiquitous —
the coverage isn’t anywhere close to that of the cellular phone networks
yet — it is getting better by the day.
Besides improving coverage and solving the roaming problem, commercial
hot spot providers are also beginning to look at solutions that provide a
higher grade of access — offering business class hot spot services, in other
words. For example, they are exploring special hot spot access points and
related gear that can offer different tiers of speeds (you could pay more to get
a faster connection) or that can offer secure connections to corporate networks
(so that you can safely log onto the office network to get work files).
In the next sections of this chapter, we talk about some of the most prominent
commercial hot spot providers operating in the United States. We’re not
going to spend any time talking about the smaller local hot spot providers
out there, although many of them are hooking up with companies like Boingo.
We’re not down on these smaller providers, but we’re aiming for the maximum
bang for our writing buck. So if you’ve got a local favorite that meets
your needs, go for it!
Using T-Mobile Hot Spots
Using T-Mobile Hot Spots
The biggest hot spot provider in the United States today — at least in terms
of companies that run their own hot spots — is T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com).
T-Mobile has hot spots up and running in over 2,000 locations, primarily at
Starbucks coffee shops in over 20 states. T-Mobile got into the hot spot business
when it purchased the assets of a startup company named Mobilestar,
which made the initial deal with Starbucks to provide wireless access in
these coffee shops.
T-Mobile has branched out beyond Starbucks and currently is also offering
access in American Airlines Admirals Clubs in a few dozen airports as well as a
handful of other locations. T-Mobile charges $29.99 a month for unlimited local
access (meaning at any T-Mobile location in your town) and $39.99 monthly for
national unlimited access. A monthly download limit is imposed; if you download
more than 500MB of data a month, you’ll have to pay a small charge (a
quarter) for each additional MB. And if you don’t have the national plan, you’ll
pay 15 cents per minute of online time when you’re using the service remotely.
T-Mobile also offers some corporate accounts (for those forward-thinking
companies that encourage their employees to drink quadruple Americanos
during working hours. . . Danny, are you listening?), prepaid account options,
and pay-as-you-go plans.
To try T-Mobile hot spots out for free, register on T-Mobile’s site at www.
t-mobile.com/hotspot.
T-Mobile, like most hot spot companies, uses your Web browser to log you in
and activate your service. You need to set the Service Set Identifier (SSID) in
your wireless network adapter’s client software to tmobile to get on the network.
(Check out Part III of the book for information on how to do this on
your laptop or handheld.)
The biggest hot spot provider in the United States today — at least in terms
of companies that run their own hot spots — is T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com).
T-Mobile has hot spots up and running in over 2,000 locations, primarily at
Starbucks coffee shops in over 20 states. T-Mobile got into the hot spot business
when it purchased the assets of a startup company named Mobilestar,
which made the initial deal with Starbucks to provide wireless access in
these coffee shops.
T-Mobile has branched out beyond Starbucks and currently is also offering
access in American Airlines Admirals Clubs in a few dozen airports as well as a
handful of other locations. T-Mobile charges $29.99 a month for unlimited local
access (meaning at any T-Mobile location in your town) and $39.99 monthly for
national unlimited access. A monthly download limit is imposed; if you download
more than 500MB of data a month, you’ll have to pay a small charge (a
quarter) for each additional MB. And if you don’t have the national plan, you’ll
pay 15 cents per minute of online time when you’re using the service remotely.
T-Mobile also offers some corporate accounts (for those forward-thinking
companies that encourage their employees to drink quadruple Americanos
during working hours. . . Danny, are you listening?), prepaid account options,
and pay-as-you-go plans.
To try T-Mobile hot spots out for free, register on T-Mobile’s site at www.
t-mobile.com/hotspot.
T-Mobile, like most hot spot companies, uses your Web browser to log you in
and activate your service. You need to set the Service Set Identifier (SSID) in
your wireless network adapter’s client software to tmobile to get on the network.
(Check out Part III of the book for information on how to do this on
your laptop or handheld.)
Using Wayport Hot Spots
Using Wayport Hot Spots
Another big commercial hot spot provider is Wayport (www.wayport.com).
Wayport has made business travelers its number one focus: The company
has hot spots in over 475 hotels and in 10 major airports nationwide. Besides
just offering Wi-Fi access, Wayport offers wired Internet access in many
hotels and airports. (You’ll see Wayport Laptop Lane kiosks in many airports
when you scurry from your security strip search to the gate.)
Wayport, like T-Mobile, offers a range of service plans, ranging from one-time,
pay-as-you-go plans using your credit card to prepaid calling card plans. You
can sign up as an annual customer for $29.95 a month (if you sign up for a
year’s worth of service; otherwise, it’s $49.95 for a month-to-month plan) to get
unlimited access to any of Wayport’s Wi-Fi locations nationwide. Wayport also
offers corporate plans, so consider bribing your IT manager if you travel a lot.
Like T-Mobile, Wayport uses your Web browser to authenticate you and collect
your billing information. You need to set your SSID to Wayport_Access
to get logged onto the access port.
Another big commercial hot spot provider is Wayport (www.wayport.com).
Wayport has made business travelers its number one focus: The company
has hot spots in over 475 hotels and in 10 major airports nationwide. Besides
just offering Wi-Fi access, Wayport offers wired Internet access in many
hotels and airports. (You’ll see Wayport Laptop Lane kiosks in many airports
when you scurry from your security strip search to the gate.)
Wayport, like T-Mobile, offers a range of service plans, ranging from one-time,
pay-as-you-go plans using your credit card to prepaid calling card plans. You
can sign up as an annual customer for $29.95 a month (if you sign up for a
year’s worth of service; otherwise, it’s $49.95 for a month-to-month plan) to get
unlimited access to any of Wayport’s Wi-Fi locations nationwide. Wayport also
offers corporate plans, so consider bribing your IT manager if you travel a lot.
Like T-Mobile, Wayport uses your Web browser to authenticate you and collect
your billing information. You need to set your SSID to Wayport_Access
to get logged onto the access port.
Using Boingo Hot Spots
Using Boingo Hot Spots
Boingo (www.boingo.com) made a big splash in 2002 when the company
launched because it was the first company to bring a solution to the hot spot
roaming issue. Boingo doesn’t own its own network of hot spots; instead, it
has partnered with a lot of other hot spot providers (including Wayport,
which we discuss in the preceding section). Boingo provides you, the user,
with some cool software, giving you access to all the hot spots of its partners
with a single account, a single bill, and not too much hassle on your part.
As of this writing, Boingo has over 1,000 hot spots up and running on its network.
Like the other providers, Boingo offers monthly plans ($24.95 for a plan
that allows ten connections a month; $49.95 for unlimited access) as well as
pay-as-you-go plans and corporate accounts. (Keep buttering up the IT manager
at work!)
The big difference between Boingo and the other services is that Boingo uses
its own software to control and manage the connection process. You download
the Boingo software (available for most Windows computers and also for
Pocket PC handhelds) and use the software to sign on to a Boingo hot spot.
This approach has its limitations: For example, not all Wi-Fi cards work with
the Boingo software — see a list of compatible cards on its Web site. However,
this approach allows Boingo to offer a more consistent user experience when
you roam around using its service. Boingo is also taking advantage of this software
to offer a Virtual Private Network (VPN; a secured network connection that
can’t be intruded upon by others) service for business customers.
If you use a Mac laptop computer, don’t bother with Boingo. The Boingo software
is only available for the Microsoft platforms that we mention earlier in
this section, and you can’t get on the Boingo network without the software.
We talk a bit more about Boingo’s software in the upcoming section “Tools for
Finding Hot Spots” because you can use Boingo’s software to sniff out open
access points around you, regardless of whether they’re Boingo’s.
Boingo (www.boingo.com) made a big splash in 2002 when the company
launched because it was the first company to bring a solution to the hot spot
roaming issue. Boingo doesn’t own its own network of hot spots; instead, it
has partnered with a lot of other hot spot providers (including Wayport,
which we discuss in the preceding section). Boingo provides you, the user,
with some cool software, giving you access to all the hot spots of its partners
with a single account, a single bill, and not too much hassle on your part.
As of this writing, Boingo has over 1,000 hot spots up and running on its network.
Like the other providers, Boingo offers monthly plans ($24.95 for a plan
that allows ten connections a month; $49.95 for unlimited access) as well as
pay-as-you-go plans and corporate accounts. (Keep buttering up the IT manager
at work!)
The big difference between Boingo and the other services is that Boingo uses
its own software to control and manage the connection process. You download
the Boingo software (available for most Windows computers and also for
Pocket PC handhelds) and use the software to sign on to a Boingo hot spot.
This approach has its limitations: For example, not all Wi-Fi cards work with
the Boingo software — see a list of compatible cards on its Web site. However,
this approach allows Boingo to offer a more consistent user experience when
you roam around using its service. Boingo is also taking advantage of this software
to offer a Virtual Private Network (VPN; a secured network connection that
can’t be intruded upon by others) service for business customers.
If you use a Mac laptop computer, don’t bother with Boingo. The Boingo software
is only available for the Microsoft platforms that we mention earlier in
this section, and you can’t get on the Boingo network without the software.
We talk a bit more about Boingo’s software in the upcoming section “Tools for
Finding Hot Spots” because you can use Boingo’s software to sniff out open
access points around you, regardless of whether they’re Boingo’s.
Tools for Finding Hot Spots
Tools for Finding Hot Spots
When you’re on the road looking for a freenet, a community hotspot, or a
commercial provider, here are a couple of ways that you can get your laptop
or handheld computer to find available networks:
Do your homework: If you know exactly where you’re going to be, you
can do some online sleuthing, find the available networks, and write
down the SSIDs and/or Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) passwords (if
required) before you get there. We talk about these in more detail in
Chapter 10. Most hot spots don’t use WEP (it’s too hard for their customers
to figure out), but you’ll find the SSID (and the WEP password, if
applicable), on the Web site of the hot spot provider that you’re planning
on using. Just look in the support or how-to-connect section.
Look for a sign: Those providers that push open hot spots have adopted
a standard logo that should be displayed prominently in a place where
you can log on.
Rely on your network adapter’s client software: Many network adapter
software systems will give you a nice pull-down list of available access
points. In most cases, this won’t really tell you any details about the
access points, but you can do the trial-and-error thing to see whether
you can get online.
Use a network sniffer program: These programs work with your network
adapter to ferret out the access points near you and provide a bit of information
about them. In the next two sections, we describe sniffers from
two companies: Netstumbler.com and Boingo. (Note: In most cases,
network sniffer programs are used to record and decode network packets —
something the highly paid network analysts at your company might use.
In this case, we’re referring to programs that are designed solely for wireless
LANs and which sniff out radio waves and identify available networks.)
We find sniffer programs to be quite handy because they’re a great way to
take a quick survey of our surroundings when we’re on the road. For example,
Pat (one of the authors of this book) was recently staying at a hotel that
belonged to a chain partnered with Wayport, but Wayport hadn’t officially
started offering service yet . . . and the hotel staff was clueless. No problem! A
quick session using the Network Stumbler software (see the next section),
and lo and behold! The Wayport access point in the lobby was up and running,
and with a quick flip of the wallet (to pull out his prepaid card), Pat was
up and running on high-speed wireless Internet. Take that, dialup!
Network sniffer programs are also a good way to help you evaluate the security
of your own network. In fact, that’s the main reason why the developers
of Network Stumbler created the program. After you implement some of the
security steps that we discuss in Chapter 10, you can fire up your favorite
sniffer program and see whether you’ve been successful.
Netstumbler.com
The granddaddy of wireless network sniffer programs is Network Stumbler
(www.netstumbler.com), which is a Windows program (works with Windows
95/98/Me/2000/XP) that connects to the PC Card network adapter in your
laptop and lets you survey the airwaves for available Wi-Fi access points.
Network Stumbler will list all available access points, giving you relatively
detailed information about things such as the SSID and Media Access Control
(MAC) address of the AP, whether WEP is enabled, the relative power of the
signal, and more. You can even combine Network Stumbler with a Global
Positioning System (GPS) card in your laptop to figure out exactly where you
and the access point are located.
Network Stumbler users can upload their surveys to the Netstumbler.com
Web page and contribute to a database of available access points that the
Netstumbler.com folks maintain. You can see a map at www.netstumbler.
com/nation.php to get an idea of places where people have already used the
program. You can submit search queries on this Web page if you want to see
other people’s survey results.
Network Stumbler won’t work with every Wi-Fi card. You can find a list of
compatible cards on the Netstumbler.com Web site.
Figure 16-2 shows Network Stumbler in action in Pat’s house, tracking down
his two access points. (Looks like none of his neighbors are wireless yet!)
Figure 16-2:
Netstumbling
Pat’s
house —
access
points
named after
the dogs!
If you use a Pocket PC handheld computer, the folks at Netstumbler.com have
a program for you: Mini Stumbler, available at the same Web site (www.net
stumbler.com). There’s also a similar program available for Mac OS X computers,
called MacStumbler (www.macstumbler.com).
In fact, a growing number of these network sniffer programs are available,
and most of them free to download. You can find a list at the Personal Telco
Project at www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/WirelessSniffer.
Boingo
Boingo’s client software (available at www.boingo.com) can also be used as a
network sniffer program (as long as you’re using a compatible operating
system and network adapter). The primary purpose of this software, of
course, is to manage your connections to Boingo’s network, but Boingo has
also designed the software (and encourages the use of it) as a means of finding
and connecting to freenets and other public open networks.
You can even use the Boingo software as a manager for all your Wi-Fi network
connections. If you’ve got a wireless network at home, one or more in the
office, plus some public networks that you want to connect to, try out
Boingo’s software. It’s really pretty cool.
Ten FAQs about Wireless Home Networks
In This Chapter
Picking the right standard
Dealing with dead Internet connections
Getting games going
Keeping things secure
Finding out about firmware
Building a wireless network is getting a lot easier, but it still can be tough
to figure things out. One of the toughest things about a wireless network
is that when it breaks, it’s not like you can go see where it’s not plugged in,
like you often can with a wired network. With the advent of new security and
other logical layer configurations, it’s easy for things to get out of sync . . .
and yes, it can take a while to debug things.
As a starting point for issues, we asked vendors what questions pop up over
and over. The following lists those most frequently asked questions that
reflect some of the things that vendors felt users could benefit from knowing
more about (we spend the rest of the chapter providing the answers):
1. What standard is right for me?
2. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not by using
my wireless local area network (LAN). What am I doing wrong?
3. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
4. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
5. How do I secure my network from hackers?
6. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
7. What is firmware, and why might I need to upgrade it?
8. Isn’t Network Address Translation (NAT) the same as a firewall?
9. How can I find out my Internet Protocol (IP) address?
10. If everything stops working, what can I do?
If you don’t see the particular question that you’re asking in the preceding
list, we recommend that you at least skim through this chapter anyway. You
never know; you might find your answer lurking where you least expect it, or
you might come across a tidbit of information that will later come in handy.
And throughout this chapter, we also steer you to where in the book we further
discuss various topics — which might in turn lead you to your answer
(or to other tidbits of information that will later come in handy). What we’re
saying is that reading this chapter can only help you. And also check out
Chapter 18, where we give you some troubleshooting tips.
If you’re new to Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, this chapter is a
great place to start because you get a good overview to the things that a lot
of people ask (when they haven’t read the manual or this book!), and you can
get to some meat (hope you’re not vegetarian!) of the issues surrounding
wireless. So don’t feel bad if you feel like you’re reading the book backward.
(Just don’t read it upside down.)
We firmly believe in the power of the Web and of using vendor Web sites for
all they’re worth. Support is a critical part of this process. When you’re
deciding on a particular piece of equipment for your home network, take a
look at the support area on the vendor site for that device. Look at the frequently
asked questions (FAQs) for the device. This is where you might find
some of those hidden gotchas that you wish you knew before buying the gear.
Q. What standard is right for me?
This is probably the most-asked question, and you probably won’t like our
answer. No, it’s not, “It depends,” (we hate that answer, too); it’s, “Buy an
802.11a/g device as your core access point (AP) so that you can figure this out
down the road.” If you have some 802.11b gear in your house, no problem —
802.11g will support it, albeit at the lower 802.11b speeds. As the g hardware
comes down in price, you might find that you move your older b equipment
to that vacation home or use it elsewhere.
Also, some of the cable industry companies are moving to implement 802.11a
in their set top boxes, as are some specialty A/V companies. So you’ll want
some 802.11a around the house.
If we thought that you could get an a/g/Bluetooth device, we would say to grab
that, too, but that’s likely to be well down the pike. (Head over to Chapter 15
for the skinny on Bluetooth.)
Think of it this way: In the early days of radio, there were a lot of similar
debates over whether to buy an AM or FM radio. In fact, both have perfectly
valid uses and coexist nicely in AM/FM radios today. For the near term,
802.11a and 802.11b/g will both have their proponents, and both will likely be
needed in your household at some point regardless of which standard you
prefer. We think that by the end of 2003, a/g devices will be the standard
offering by the equipment manufacturers.
If you’re determined to pick one specific version, say 802.11b (after all, both
the 802.11a and g technologies are still relatively early in their lifecycle), we
respect that and feel that 802.11b will work great for almost all applications
with the exception of the high-bandwidth requirements of high-quality
streaming video. If you anticipate accessing video over your wireless network,
such as for streaming MovieLink movies-on-demand through your PC
over wireless to your home entertainment center, you’ll probably want to
boost this to an a or g connection. If you have a couple of microwaves and
lots of 2.4 GHz cordless phones around, 802.11a might be better for your environment.
Likewise, if your house is spread out and/or you’ve got 5 GHz
phones, 802.11g could be your answer.
For longevity and investment protection, we advocate 802.11 a/g dual-mode
APs.
Q. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not
by using my wireless LAN. What am I doing wrong?
In actuality, you are almost there. The fact that everything works for one configuration
and not for another actually rules out many potentialities. As long as
your AP and router are the same device (which is most common), you know
that the AP can talk to your Internet gateway (whether it’s your cable modem,
digital subscriber line [DSL] model, dialup routers, and so on). You know that
because when you’re connected via Ethernet, there is no problem. So the problem
is relegated to being between your AP and your client on your PC.
Most of the time, this is a configuration issue dealing with your Service Set
Identifier (SSID) and Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) configurations. Your
SSID denotes your service area ID for your LAN, and your WEP controls your
encryption keys for your data packets. Without both, you can’t decode the
signals traveling through the air.
Bring up your wireless configuration program, as we discuss in Chapter 6 and
recheck that your SSID is set correctly and that your WEP is likewise correct.
Try typing the word any into the SSID to see whether it finds the AP at that
point.
If neither of those is the problem, borrow a friend’s laptop with a compatible
wireless connection to see whether his card can find and sign onto your LAN
when empowered with the right SSID and WEP codes. If it can, you know that
it might be your client card. It could have gone bad.
Most cards (or any electronics, generally speaking) have technical problems
within the first 30 days if they’re going to go bad.
If your friend’s PC cannot log on, the problem might be with your AP. At this
point, we have to say, “Check out the vendor’s Web site for more specific
problem-solving ideas and call its tech support for further help.”
Q. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
This question has an easy answer and a not-so-easy answer. The easy answer
is that you can get your Xbox, PlayStation 2, or GameCube onto your wireless
LAN by linking the Ethernet port on your gaming device (if necessary, purchasing
a network adapter kit to add an Ethernet port on your system) with a
wireless bridge — which gets your gaming gear onto your wireless network in
a very easy fashion. You just need to be sure to set your bridge to the same
SSID and WEP as your LAN.
That’s the easy part, and you should now be able to access the Internet from
your box.
The tough part is allowing the Internet to access you and your gaming
system. This is required for certain games, two-way voice, and aspects of
multiplayer gaming. For this, you might need to open up certain ports in your
router to enable those packets bound for your gaming system to get there.
This is port forwarding (or something like that; vendors love to call things differently
amongst themselves). Port forwarding basically says to the router
that it should block all packets from accessing your system except those with
certain characteristics that you identify (these types of data packets can be
let through to your gaming server). We talk a lot about this in Chapter 11, so
be sure to read up on that before tinkering with your router configuration.
If this is too complex to pull off with your present router, you might consider
just setting up a demilitarized zone (DMZ) for your gaming application, where
this sits fairly open to the network. This is not a preferred setup, however, for
security reasons, and we recommend that you try to get port forwarding to
work. We discuss setting up a DMZ in Chapter 12.
Q. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
In some ways, videoconferencing is its own animal in its own world.
Videoconferencing has its own set of standards that it follows, typically has
specialized hardware and software, and until very recently, has required special
telephone lines to work.
The success of the Internet and its related protocols has opened this up to a
more mass market with IP standards-based Web cameras and other softwarebased
systems becoming popular.
Still, if you’ve installed a router with the appropriate protection from the
Internet bad guys, videoconferencing can be problematic for all the same reasons
as gaming that we mention earlier. You need to have packets coming into
your application just as much as you are sending packets out to someone.
Now wait a minute. You might be thinking, “Data packets come into my
machine all the time (like when I download Web pages), so what are you
saying?” Well, those packets are requested, and the router in your AP (or
your separate router, if that’s how your network is set up) knows that they’re
coming and lets them through. Videoconferencing packets are often unrequested,
which makes the whole getting-through-the-router thing a bit
tougher.
As such, the answer is the same as with gaming. You need to open ports in
your router (port forwarding) or to set up your video application in a DMZ.
Again, Chapter 12 can be a world of help here.
Q. How do I secure my network from hackers?
Nothing is totally secure from anything. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,”
tends to govern most discussions about someone hacking into your LAN. So
we tend to fall back on, “Unless you have some major, super-secret hidden
trove of something on your LAN that a lot of people would simply kill to have
access to, the chances of a hacker spending a lot of time to get on your LAN
is minimal.” This means that as long as you do the basic security enhancements
that we recommend in Chapter 10, you should be covered.
These basic enhancements cover
Securing your Internet connection: At a minimum, you should turn on
whatever firewall protection that your router offers. If you can, choose a
router that’s got Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). You should also use
antivirus software and seriously consider using personal firewall software
on your PCs. It’s defense in depth — after the bad guys get by your
router firewall’s Maginot line, you’ve got extra guns to protect your PCs.
(For a little historical perspective on defense strategies, read up on
Maginot and his fortification.)
Securing your airwaves: Because wireless LAN signals can travel right
through your walls and out the door, you should strongly consider turning
on WEP (and taking other measures that we discuss in Chapter 10)
to keep the next-door neighbors from snooping on your network.
Q. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
It’s often easy to determine whether you’ve opened up your ports because
your multiplayer gaming (or videoconferencing or whatever application
requiring port forwarding) now works — where it didn’t before.
However, the opposite is not always so easy to determine: that is, when you
have open ports that should be closed. This often happens when you open
ports for an application that you’re no longer using (but forgot to close the
ports again).
Plus, you might not have set things correctly in the first place.
We recommend the program ShieldsUP!! (www.grc.com). This program will
systematically test your router, effectively trying to break into your system
by using all commonly known techniques. The program will then issue you a
report that tells you how secure your router is — and if it’s not, what to do to
fix it. We highly recommend this.
Picking the right standard
Dealing with dead Internet connections
Getting games going
Keeping things secure
Finding out about firmware
Building a wireless network is getting a lot easier, but it still can be tough
to figure things out. One of the toughest things about a wireless network
is that when it breaks, it’s not like you can go see where it’s not plugged in,
like you often can with a wired network. With the advent of new security and
other logical layer configurations, it’s easy for things to get out of sync . . .
and yes, it can take a while to debug things.
As a starting point for issues, we asked vendors what questions pop up over
and over. The following lists those most frequently asked questions that
reflect some of the things that vendors felt users could benefit from knowing
more about (we spend the rest of the chapter providing the answers):
1. What standard is right for me?
2. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not by using
my wireless local area network (LAN). What am I doing wrong?
3. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
4. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
5. How do I secure my network from hackers?
6. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
7. What is firmware, and why might I need to upgrade it?
8. Isn’t Network Address Translation (NAT) the same as a firewall?
9. How can I find out my Internet Protocol (IP) address?
10. If everything stops working, what can I do?
If you don’t see the particular question that you’re asking in the preceding
list, we recommend that you at least skim through this chapter anyway. You
never know; you might find your answer lurking where you least expect it, or
you might come across a tidbit of information that will later come in handy.
And throughout this chapter, we also steer you to where in the book we further
discuss various topics — which might in turn lead you to your answer
(or to other tidbits of information that will later come in handy). What we’re
saying is that reading this chapter can only help you. And also check out
Chapter 18, where we give you some troubleshooting tips.
If you’re new to Wireless Home Networking For Dummies, this chapter is a
great place to start because you get a good overview to the things that a lot
of people ask (when they haven’t read the manual or this book!), and you can
get to some meat (hope you’re not vegetarian!) of the issues surrounding
wireless. So don’t feel bad if you feel like you’re reading the book backward.
(Just don’t read it upside down.)
We firmly believe in the power of the Web and of using vendor Web sites for
all they’re worth. Support is a critical part of this process. When you’re
deciding on a particular piece of equipment for your home network, take a
look at the support area on the vendor site for that device. Look at the frequently
asked questions (FAQs) for the device. This is where you might find
some of those hidden gotchas that you wish you knew before buying the gear.
Q. What standard is right for me?
This is probably the most-asked question, and you probably won’t like our
answer. No, it’s not, “It depends,” (we hate that answer, too); it’s, “Buy an
802.11a/g device as your core access point (AP) so that you can figure this out
down the road.” If you have some 802.11b gear in your house, no problem —
802.11g will support it, albeit at the lower 802.11b speeds. As the g hardware
comes down in price, you might find that you move your older b equipment
to that vacation home or use it elsewhere.
Also, some of the cable industry companies are moving to implement 802.11a
in their set top boxes, as are some specialty A/V companies. So you’ll want
some 802.11a around the house.
If we thought that you could get an a/g/Bluetooth device, we would say to grab
that, too, but that’s likely to be well down the pike. (Head over to Chapter 15
for the skinny on Bluetooth.)
Think of it this way: In the early days of radio, there were a lot of similar
debates over whether to buy an AM or FM radio. In fact, both have perfectly
valid uses and coexist nicely in AM/FM radios today. For the near term,
802.11a and 802.11b/g will both have their proponents, and both will likely be
needed in your household at some point regardless of which standard you
prefer. We think that by the end of 2003, a/g devices will be the standard
offering by the equipment manufacturers.
If you’re determined to pick one specific version, say 802.11b (after all, both
the 802.11a and g technologies are still relatively early in their lifecycle), we
respect that and feel that 802.11b will work great for almost all applications
with the exception of the high-bandwidth requirements of high-quality
streaming video. If you anticipate accessing video over your wireless network,
such as for streaming MovieLink movies-on-demand through your PC
over wireless to your home entertainment center, you’ll probably want to
boost this to an a or g connection. If you have a couple of microwaves and
lots of 2.4 GHz cordless phones around, 802.11a might be better for your environment.
Likewise, if your house is spread out and/or you’ve got 5 GHz
phones, 802.11g could be your answer.
For longevity and investment protection, we advocate 802.11 a/g dual-mode
APs.
Q. I can connect to the Internet by using an Ethernet cable but not
by using my wireless LAN. What am I doing wrong?
In actuality, you are almost there. The fact that everything works for one configuration
and not for another actually rules out many potentialities. As long as
your AP and router are the same device (which is most common), you know
that the AP can talk to your Internet gateway (whether it’s your cable modem,
digital subscriber line [DSL] model, dialup routers, and so on). You know that
because when you’re connected via Ethernet, there is no problem. So the problem
is relegated to being between your AP and your client on your PC.
Most of the time, this is a configuration issue dealing with your Service Set
Identifier (SSID) and Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) configurations. Your
SSID denotes your service area ID for your LAN, and your WEP controls your
encryption keys for your data packets. Without both, you can’t decode the
signals traveling through the air.
Bring up your wireless configuration program, as we discuss in Chapter 6 and
recheck that your SSID is set correctly and that your WEP is likewise correct.
Try typing the word any into the SSID to see whether it finds the AP at that
point.
If neither of those is the problem, borrow a friend’s laptop with a compatible
wireless connection to see whether his card can find and sign onto your LAN
when empowered with the right SSID and WEP codes. If it can, you know that
it might be your client card. It could have gone bad.
Most cards (or any electronics, generally speaking) have technical problems
within the first 30 days if they’re going to go bad.
If your friend’s PC cannot log on, the problem might be with your AP. At this
point, we have to say, “Check out the vendor’s Web site for more specific
problem-solving ideas and call its tech support for further help.”
Q. How do I get my video games to work on my wireless LAN?
This question has an easy answer and a not-so-easy answer. The easy answer
is that you can get your Xbox, PlayStation 2, or GameCube onto your wireless
LAN by linking the Ethernet port on your gaming device (if necessary, purchasing
a network adapter kit to add an Ethernet port on your system) with a
wireless bridge — which gets your gaming gear onto your wireless network in
a very easy fashion. You just need to be sure to set your bridge to the same
SSID and WEP as your LAN.
That’s the easy part, and you should now be able to access the Internet from
your box.
The tough part is allowing the Internet to access you and your gaming
system. This is required for certain games, two-way voice, and aspects of
multiplayer gaming. For this, you might need to open up certain ports in your
router to enable those packets bound for your gaming system to get there.
This is port forwarding (or something like that; vendors love to call things differently
amongst themselves). Port forwarding basically says to the router
that it should block all packets from accessing your system except those with
certain characteristics that you identify (these types of data packets can be
let through to your gaming server). We talk a lot about this in Chapter 11, so
be sure to read up on that before tinkering with your router configuration.
If this is too complex to pull off with your present router, you might consider
just setting up a demilitarized zone (DMZ) for your gaming application, where
this sits fairly open to the network. This is not a preferred setup, however, for
security reasons, and we recommend that you try to get port forwarding to
work. We discuss setting up a DMZ in Chapter 12.
Q. My videoconferencing application doesn’t work. What do I do?
In some ways, videoconferencing is its own animal in its own world.
Videoconferencing has its own set of standards that it follows, typically has
specialized hardware and software, and until very recently, has required special
telephone lines to work.
The success of the Internet and its related protocols has opened this up to a
more mass market with IP standards-based Web cameras and other softwarebased
systems becoming popular.
Still, if you’ve installed a router with the appropriate protection from the
Internet bad guys, videoconferencing can be problematic for all the same reasons
as gaming that we mention earlier. You need to have packets coming into
your application just as much as you are sending packets out to someone.
Now wait a minute. You might be thinking, “Data packets come into my
machine all the time (like when I download Web pages), so what are you
saying?” Well, those packets are requested, and the router in your AP (or
your separate router, if that’s how your network is set up) knows that they’re
coming and lets them through. Videoconferencing packets are often unrequested,
which makes the whole getting-through-the-router thing a bit
tougher.
As such, the answer is the same as with gaming. You need to open ports in
your router (port forwarding) or to set up your video application in a DMZ.
Again, Chapter 12 can be a world of help here.
Q. How do I secure my network from hackers?
Nothing is totally secure from anything. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,”
tends to govern most discussions about someone hacking into your LAN. So
we tend to fall back on, “Unless you have some major, super-secret hidden
trove of something on your LAN that a lot of people would simply kill to have
access to, the chances of a hacker spending a lot of time to get on your LAN
is minimal.” This means that as long as you do the basic security enhancements
that we recommend in Chapter 10, you should be covered.
These basic enhancements cover
Securing your Internet connection: At a minimum, you should turn on
whatever firewall protection that your router offers. If you can, choose a
router that’s got Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). You should also use
antivirus software and seriously consider using personal firewall software
on your PCs. It’s defense in depth — after the bad guys get by your
router firewall’s Maginot line, you’ve got extra guns to protect your PCs.
(For a little historical perspective on defense strategies, read up on
Maginot and his fortification.)
Securing your airwaves: Because wireless LAN signals can travel right
through your walls and out the door, you should strongly consider turning
on WEP (and taking other measures that we discuss in Chapter 10)
to keep the next-door neighbors from snooping on your network.
Q. How do I check to make sure that I’m secure?
It’s often easy to determine whether you’ve opened up your ports because
your multiplayer gaming (or videoconferencing or whatever application
requiring port forwarding) now works — where it didn’t before.
However, the opposite is not always so easy to determine: that is, when you
have open ports that should be closed. This often happens when you open
ports for an application that you’re no longer using (but forgot to close the
ports again).
Plus, you might not have set things correctly in the first place.
We recommend the program ShieldsUP!! (www.grc.com). This program will
systematically test your router, effectively trying to break into your system
by using all commonly known techniques. The program will then issue you a
report that tells you how secure your router is — and if it’s not, what to do to
fix it. We highly recommend this.
What is firmware, and why might I need to upgrade it?
Q. What is firmware, and why might I need to upgrade it?
Any consumer electronics device is governed by software that’s seated in
onboard chip memory storage. When you turn on the device, it checks this
memory for what to do and loads the software in that area. This turns the
device on.
This firmware, as it’s referred to, can be updated through a process that’s
specific to each manufacturer. Often you’ll see options in your software configuration
program for checking for firmware upgrades.
Some folks advocate never, ever touching your firmware if you don’t need to.
Indeed, reprogramming your firmware can upset a lot of the logical innards of
your device that you struggled so hard to get right in the first place. In fact,
you might see this advice on a vendor site (like this is from the D-Link site):
“Do not upgrade firmware unless you are having specific problems (“If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it”). Upgrading firmware will reset the settings to default
which means you will lose all your settings. You cannot use the backup settings
feature and apply it to the newer firmware. Do NOT upgrade firmware
with a wireless connection. You will damage the router.” Although not all
vendor firmware upgrades will reset your settings to default, many do. Be
careful!
Okay, we don’t necessarily disagree with any of that except to say, “Never say
never.” The standards in the wireless arena are changing, particularly in the
802.11a and 802.11g areas. One of the key ways that you can keep current
with these standards is by upgrading your firmware. You will find over time
that your wireless network will fall out of sync with these standards, and
you’ll have to upgrade at some point. When you do so, follow all the manufacturer’s
warnings.
In Chapter 10, we discuss a forthcoming security enhancement for 802.11
LANs called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). Many existing APs and network
adapters will be able to use WPA but only after they’ve had their firmware
upgraded.
Q. Isn’t NAT the same as a firewall?
If you finding networking confusing, you’re not alone. (If it were so easy, we’d
have no market for our books!) One area of a lot of confusion is Network
Address Translation (NAT). And no, NAT is not the same as a firewall. It’s
important to understand the difference, too, to make sure that you set up
your network correctly. Firewalls provide a greater level of security than a
NAT router, and as a result, are generally more expensive than simple routers.
Often you’ll hear the term firewall used to describe a router’s ability to protect
LAN IP addresses from Internet snoopers. But a true firewall actually
goes deeper than this, using SPI. This allows the firewalls to look at each IP
address and domain requesting access to the network; the administrator can
specify certain IP addresses or domain names that are allowed to be let in
while blocking any other attempt to access the LAN. (Sometimes you’ll hear
this called filtering.)
Firewalls can also add another layer of protection through a Virtual Private
Network (VPN). This enables remote access to the private network through
the use of secure logins and authentication. Finally, firewalls can help protect
your family from unsavory content by enabling you to block content from
certain sites.
So firewalls go well beyond NAT, and we highly recommend that you have a
firewall in your home network. Check out Chapter 10 for more information on
firewalls.
Q. How can I find out my IP address?
Well, first off, you have two IP addresses: your public IP address and your private
IP address. There are instances where you need to know one or the
other (or both) of these.
Your private IP address is your IP address on your LAN so that your router
knows where to send traffic in and among LAN devices. If you have a LAN
printer, that device will have its own IP address, as will any network device
on your LAN.
The address that these devices have, however, is rarely the public IP address
(the address is the “Internet phone number” of your network) mostly
because public IP addresses are becoming scarce. Your Internet gateway has
a public IP address for your home. If you want to access a specific device
that’s on your home network but from a public location, you typically have to
enable port forwarding and address that port on your public IP address,
something like 68.129.5.29:80, where 80 is the port.
You can usually find out your wide area network (WAN; public IP address) and
LAN (private IP address) from within your router configuration software. You
might see a Status screen; this is a common place where it shows your present
IP addresses and other key information about your present Internet connection.
If you have Windows 2000 or XP, you can find your computer’s private IP
address by choosing Start➪Run. When the Run dialog box pops up, type cmd
and then click OK. In the window that opens, type ipconfig at the command
prompt and then press Enter. You’ll see your IP address and a few other network
parameters.
This IP address is your internal or private IP address, not the public address
that people on the Internet use to connect to your network. So if you try to
give this to someone (perhaps so that they can connect to your computer to
do some videoconferencing or to connect to a game server that you’re hosting),
it won’t work. You need the public IP address that you’ll find in the configuration
program for your access point/router.
Q. If everything stops working, what can I do?
The long time that it can take to get help from tech support these days actually
does lead a lot of people to read the manual, check out the Web site, and work
hard to debug their present situation. But what happens if you’ve tried everything,
and it’s still a dead connection — and tech support agrees with you?
In these instances, the last resort is to do a reset of the system back to the
factory defaults and literally start over. If you do this, be sure to upgrade
your firmware while you’re at it because it will reset your variables, anyway.
And who knows, the more recent firmware update might resolve some issues
that could be causing the problems.
Resetting your device is considered a pretty drastic action and taken only
after you’ve tried everything else. Make sure that you at least get a tech support
person on the phone to confirm that you have tried everything else and
that a reset makes sense.
Any consumer electronics device is governed by software that’s seated in
onboard chip memory storage. When you turn on the device, it checks this
memory for what to do and loads the software in that area. This turns the
device on.
This firmware, as it’s referred to, can be updated through a process that’s
specific to each manufacturer. Often you’ll see options in your software configuration
program for checking for firmware upgrades.
Some folks advocate never, ever touching your firmware if you don’t need to.
Indeed, reprogramming your firmware can upset a lot of the logical innards of
your device that you struggled so hard to get right in the first place. In fact,
you might see this advice on a vendor site (like this is from the D-Link site):
“Do not upgrade firmware unless you are having specific problems (“If it ain’t
broke, don’t fix it”). Upgrading firmware will reset the settings to default
which means you will lose all your settings. You cannot use the backup settings
feature and apply it to the newer firmware. Do NOT upgrade firmware
with a wireless connection. You will damage the router.” Although not all
vendor firmware upgrades will reset your settings to default, many do. Be
careful!
Okay, we don’t necessarily disagree with any of that except to say, “Never say
never.” The standards in the wireless arena are changing, particularly in the
802.11a and 802.11g areas. One of the key ways that you can keep current
with these standards is by upgrading your firmware. You will find over time
that your wireless network will fall out of sync with these standards, and
you’ll have to upgrade at some point. When you do so, follow all the manufacturer’s
warnings.
In Chapter 10, we discuss a forthcoming security enhancement for 802.11
LANs called Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). Many existing APs and network
adapters will be able to use WPA but only after they’ve had their firmware
upgraded.
Q. Isn’t NAT the same as a firewall?
If you finding networking confusing, you’re not alone. (If it were so easy, we’d
have no market for our books!) One area of a lot of confusion is Network
Address Translation (NAT). And no, NAT is not the same as a firewall. It’s
important to understand the difference, too, to make sure that you set up
your network correctly. Firewalls provide a greater level of security than a
NAT router, and as a result, are generally more expensive than simple routers.
Often you’ll hear the term firewall used to describe a router’s ability to protect
LAN IP addresses from Internet snoopers. But a true firewall actually
goes deeper than this, using SPI. This allows the firewalls to look at each IP
address and domain requesting access to the network; the administrator can
specify certain IP addresses or domain names that are allowed to be let in
while blocking any other attempt to access the LAN. (Sometimes you’ll hear
this called filtering.)
Firewalls can also add another layer of protection through a Virtual Private
Network (VPN). This enables remote access to the private network through
the use of secure logins and authentication. Finally, firewalls can help protect
your family from unsavory content by enabling you to block content from
certain sites.
So firewalls go well beyond NAT, and we highly recommend that you have a
firewall in your home network. Check out Chapter 10 for more information on
firewalls.
Q. How can I find out my IP address?
Well, first off, you have two IP addresses: your public IP address and your private
IP address. There are instances where you need to know one or the
other (or both) of these.
Your private IP address is your IP address on your LAN so that your router
knows where to send traffic in and among LAN devices. If you have a LAN
printer, that device will have its own IP address, as will any network device
on your LAN.
The address that these devices have, however, is rarely the public IP address
(the address is the “Internet phone number” of your network) mostly
because public IP addresses are becoming scarce. Your Internet gateway has
a public IP address for your home. If you want to access a specific device
that’s on your home network but from a public location, you typically have to
enable port forwarding and address that port on your public IP address,
something like 68.129.5.29:80, where 80 is the port.
You can usually find out your wide area network (WAN; public IP address) and
LAN (private IP address) from within your router configuration software. You
might see a Status screen; this is a common place where it shows your present
IP addresses and other key information about your present Internet connection.
If you have Windows 2000 or XP, you can find your computer’s private IP
address by choosing Start➪Run. When the Run dialog box pops up, type cmd
and then click OK. In the window that opens, type ipconfig at the command
prompt and then press Enter. You’ll see your IP address and a few other network
parameters.
This IP address is your internal or private IP address, not the public address
that people on the Internet use to connect to your network. So if you try to
give this to someone (perhaps so that they can connect to your computer to
do some videoconferencing or to connect to a game server that you’re hosting),
it won’t work. You need the public IP address that you’ll find in the configuration
program for your access point/router.
Q. If everything stops working, what can I do?
The long time that it can take to get help from tech support these days actually
does lead a lot of people to read the manual, check out the Web site, and work
hard to debug their present situation. But what happens if you’ve tried everything,
and it’s still a dead connection — and tech support agrees with you?
In these instances, the last resort is to do a reset of the system back to the
factory defaults and literally start over. If you do this, be sure to upgrade
your firmware while you’re at it because it will reset your variables, anyway.
And who knows, the more recent firmware update might resolve some issues
that could be causing the problems.
Resetting your device is considered a pretty drastic action and taken only
after you’ve tried everything else. Make sure that you at least get a tech support
person on the phone to confirm that you have tried everything else and
that a reset makes sense.
Ten Ways to Troubleshoot Wireless LAN Performance
In This Chapter
Moving your access point(s)
Flipping channels
Boosting your signals
Checking your cordless phones
Although troubleshooting any piece of network equipment can be frustrating,
when you deal with wireless equipment, it’s a little more so
because there’s so much that you just can’t check. After all, radio waves
are invisible. That’s the rub with improving the throughput (performance)
of your wireless home network, but we’re here to help. And don’t get hung up
on the term throughput — it’s just the actual rate of the data flowing when you
take into account retransmissions attributable to errors.
The trick to successful troubleshooting anything is to be logical and systematic.
First, think about the most likely issues and work from there (no matter
how improbable). The second thing to do is to be systematic. Networks are
complicated things, which mandates sequential troubleshooting thinking on
your part. Patience is a virtue when it comes to network debugging.
But perhaps hardest of all is making sense of performance issues, which
is the subject of this chapter. First of all, you can’t get a lot of great performance
reporting from consumer-level access points (the much more expensive
ones sold to businesses are better at that). And even so, debugging
performance based on performance data in arrears is tough. Fixing performance
issues is a trial-and-error, real-time process. At least most wireless
client devices have some sort of signal strength meter, which is one of the
best sources of information that you can get to help you understand what’s
happening. (This is a key point, and these signal strength meters are used by
the pros, says Tim Shaughnessy at NETGEAR: “I would highlight it as a tool.”
We agree.)
It’s a good idea to work with a friend or family member. Your friend can be in
a poor reception “hole” with a notebook computer with the wireless utility
showing the signal strength. You can try moving or configuring the AP to see
what works. Just be patient — it can take a few seconds for the signal meter
to react to changes.
Because not all performance issues can be tracked down . . . or at least not
easily . . . in this chapter, we introduce you to the most common ways to
improve the performance or your wireless home network. These are triedand-
true tips, having been there ourselves. We’re pretty good at debugging
this stuff by now. We just can’t seem to figure out when it’s not plugged in!
(Well, Pat can’t . . . read the next section to see what we mean.)
Moving your access point(s)
Flipping channels
Boosting your signals
Checking your cordless phones
Although troubleshooting any piece of network equipment can be frustrating,
when you deal with wireless equipment, it’s a little more so
because there’s so much that you just can’t check. After all, radio waves
are invisible. That’s the rub with improving the throughput (performance)
of your wireless home network, but we’re here to help. And don’t get hung up
on the term throughput — it’s just the actual rate of the data flowing when you
take into account retransmissions attributable to errors.
The trick to successful troubleshooting anything is to be logical and systematic.
First, think about the most likely issues and work from there (no matter
how improbable). The second thing to do is to be systematic. Networks are
complicated things, which mandates sequential troubleshooting thinking on
your part. Patience is a virtue when it comes to network debugging.
But perhaps hardest of all is making sense of performance issues, which
is the subject of this chapter. First of all, you can’t get a lot of great performance
reporting from consumer-level access points (the much more expensive
ones sold to businesses are better at that). And even so, debugging
performance based on performance data in arrears is tough. Fixing performance
issues is a trial-and-error, real-time process. At least most wireless
client devices have some sort of signal strength meter, which is one of the
best sources of information that you can get to help you understand what’s
happening. (This is a key point, and these signal strength meters are used by
the pros, says Tim Shaughnessy at NETGEAR: “I would highlight it as a tool.”
We agree.)
It’s a good idea to work with a friend or family member. Your friend can be in
a poor reception “hole” with a notebook computer with the wireless utility
showing the signal strength. You can try moving or configuring the AP to see
what works. Just be patient — it can take a few seconds for the signal meter
to react to changes.
Because not all performance issues can be tracked down . . . or at least not
easily . . . in this chapter, we introduce you to the most common ways to
improve the performance or your wireless home network. These are triedand-
true tips, having been there ourselves. We’re pretty good at debugging
this stuff by now. We just can’t seem to figure out when it’s not plugged in!
(Well, Pat can’t . . . read the next section to see what we mean.)
Check the Obvious
Check the Obvious
Sometimes, what’s causing you trouble is something simple — and which you
can fix simply.
For instance, one of us (and we won’t say who . . . Pat) was surprised that his
access point (AP) just stopped working one day. The culprit was his beagle,
Opie, who had pulled the plug out of the wall. As obvious as this sounds, it
took the unnamed person (Pat) an hour to figure it out. Now if someone told
you, “Hey, the AP just stopped working,” you’d probably say, “Is it plugged
in?” The moral: Think of the obvious and check that first.
Following are a couple more simple problems to think of first. . . .
Problem: The power goes out and then comes back on. Different equipment
takes different periods of time to reset and go through to restart, causing loss
of connectivity and logical configurations in your network.
Solution: Sometimes you need to just turn everything off and then turn
them back on in order — from the wide area network (WAN) connection
(your broadband modem, for instance) back to your machine — allowing
each device to start up with everything upstream properly in place and
turned on.
Problem: Your AP is working fine, with great throughput and a strong signal
footprint, until one day when it all just drops off substantially. No hardware
problem. No new interferers installed at home. No new obstructions. No
changes of software. Nothing. End cause: The next door neighbor got an
access point and was using his on the same channel.
Solution: This is hard to debug in the first place. How the heck do you
find out who is charging invisible interference — by going door to door?
“Uh, pardon me, I’m going door to door to try to debug interferers on my
access point. Are you suddenly emitting any extraneous radio waves? No,
I’m not wearing an aluminum foil hat, why?” Often with debugging performance
issues, you need to try a lot of the one-step solutions, such as changing
channels, to see whether that has an effect. If you can find the solution,
you will have a lot of insight as to what the problem was. (If changing channels
solved the problem, someone nearby was probably using the same channel,
and you can then start tracking down whom!)
The wireless utility for the adapter might have a tab listing the APs in range
called a Site Survey or Station List. It might show your neighbor’s AP and the
channel that it’s on.
And before you chase a performance issue, make sure that there is one. The
advertised rates for throughput for the various wireless standards are pretty
misleading. What starts out at 54 Mbps for 802.11a is really more like a maximum
of 36 Mbps in practice (less as distance grows). For 802.11b, it’s more
like 6 Mbps at best, rather than the 11 Mbps that you hear bandied about.
You will occasionally see the high levels (like when you’re within a few yards
of the access point), but that’s rare. The moral: If you think that you should
be getting 54 Mbps but you’re only getting 38 Mbps, consider yourself lucky.
Sometimes, what’s causing you trouble is something simple — and which you
can fix simply.
For instance, one of us (and we won’t say who . . . Pat) was surprised that his
access point (AP) just stopped working one day. The culprit was his beagle,
Opie, who had pulled the plug out of the wall. As obvious as this sounds, it
took the unnamed person (Pat) an hour to figure it out. Now if someone told
you, “Hey, the AP just stopped working,” you’d probably say, “Is it plugged
in?” The moral: Think of the obvious and check that first.
Following are a couple more simple problems to think of first. . . .
Problem: The power goes out and then comes back on. Different equipment
takes different periods of time to reset and go through to restart, causing loss
of connectivity and logical configurations in your network.
Solution: Sometimes you need to just turn everything off and then turn
them back on in order — from the wide area network (WAN) connection
(your broadband modem, for instance) back to your machine — allowing
each device to start up with everything upstream properly in place and
turned on.
Problem: Your AP is working fine, with great throughput and a strong signal
footprint, until one day when it all just drops off substantially. No hardware
problem. No new interferers installed at home. No new obstructions. No
changes of software. Nothing. End cause: The next door neighbor got an
access point and was using his on the same channel.
Solution: This is hard to debug in the first place. How the heck do you
find out who is charging invisible interference — by going door to door?
“Uh, pardon me, I’m going door to door to try to debug interferers on my
access point. Are you suddenly emitting any extraneous radio waves? No,
I’m not wearing an aluminum foil hat, why?” Often with debugging performance
issues, you need to try a lot of the one-step solutions, such as changing
channels, to see whether that has an effect. If you can find the solution,
you will have a lot of insight as to what the problem was. (If changing channels
solved the problem, someone nearby was probably using the same channel,
and you can then start tracking down whom!)
The wireless utility for the adapter might have a tab listing the APs in range
called a Site Survey or Station List. It might show your neighbor’s AP and the
channel that it’s on.
And before you chase a performance issue, make sure that there is one. The
advertised rates for throughput for the various wireless standards are pretty
misleading. What starts out at 54 Mbps for 802.11a is really more like a maximum
of 36 Mbps in practice (less as distance grows). For 802.11b, it’s more
like 6 Mbps at best, rather than the 11 Mbps that you hear bandied about.
You will occasionally see the high levels (like when you’re within a few yards
of the access point), but that’s rare. The moral: If you think that you should
be getting 54 Mbps but you’re only getting 38 Mbps, consider yourself lucky.
Move the Access Point
Move the Access Point
Fact: A wireless signal degrades with distance. You might find that the place
where you originally placed your AP doesn’t really fit with your subsequent
real-world use of your wireless local area network (LAN). A move might be in
order.
After your access point is up and working, you’ll probably forget about it —
people often do. Access points can often be moved around and even shuffled
aside by subsequent gear. Because the access connection is still up (that is to
say, working), sometimes people don’t notice that the access point’s performance
degrades when you hide it more or move it around.
Make sure that your AP is where you want it to be. Check that other gear isn’t
blocking your AP, that your AP isn’t flush against a wall (which can cause
interference), that the vertical orientation of the AP isn’t too close to the
ground (more interference), and that your AP isn’t in line of sight of radio
wave interference (like from microwaves and cordless phones).
Even a few inches can make a difference. The best location is in the center of
your desired coverage area (remember to think in three dimensions!) and on
top of a desk or bookcase.
For more about setting up access points, check out Chapter 6.
Move the Antenna(s)
Remember the days before everyone had cable or satellite TV? There was
a reason people would fiddle with the rabbit ears on a TV set — they were
trying to get the antennas into the ideal position to receive signals. Whether
the antenna is on the client or on the access point, the same concept applies:
Moving the antenna can yield results. Because different antennas have different
signal coverage areas, reorienting it in a different declination (or angle relative
to the horizon) will change the coverage pattern. And a strong signal
translates to better throughput and performance.
Look at it this way: The antenna creates a certain footprint of its signal. If
you’re networking a multi-story home and you’re not getting a great signal
upstairs, try shifting your antenna to a 45° angle to increase a more vertical
signal — that is, send more signal to the upstairs and downstairs, and less
horizontally.
Fact: A wireless signal degrades with distance. You might find that the place
where you originally placed your AP doesn’t really fit with your subsequent
real-world use of your wireless local area network (LAN). A move might be in
order.
After your access point is up and working, you’ll probably forget about it —
people often do. Access points can often be moved around and even shuffled
aside by subsequent gear. Because the access connection is still up (that is to
say, working), sometimes people don’t notice that the access point’s performance
degrades when you hide it more or move it around.
Make sure that your AP is where you want it to be. Check that other gear isn’t
blocking your AP, that your AP isn’t flush against a wall (which can cause
interference), that the vertical orientation of the AP isn’t too close to the
ground (more interference), and that your AP isn’t in line of sight of radio
wave interference (like from microwaves and cordless phones).
Even a few inches can make a difference. The best location is in the center of
your desired coverage area (remember to think in three dimensions!) and on
top of a desk or bookcase.
For more about setting up access points, check out Chapter 6.
Move the Antenna(s)
Remember the days before everyone had cable or satellite TV? There was
a reason people would fiddle with the rabbit ears on a TV set — they were
trying to get the antennas into the ideal position to receive signals. Whether
the antenna is on the client or on the access point, the same concept applies:
Moving the antenna can yield results. Because different antennas have different
signal coverage areas, reorienting it in a different declination (or angle relative
to the horizon) will change the coverage pattern. And a strong signal
translates to better throughput and performance.
Look at it this way: The antenna creates a certain footprint of its signal. If
you’re networking a multi-story home and you’re not getting a great signal
upstairs, try shifting your antenna to a 45° angle to increase a more vertical
signal — that is, send more signal to the upstairs and downstairs, and less
horizontally.
Change Channels
Change Channels
Each AP broadcasts its signals over portions of the wireless frequencies
called channels. The 802.11b standard (the most common system as we
write) defines 11 channels in the United States that overlap considerably,
leaving only 3 channels that don’t overlap with each other. The IEEE 802.11a
standard specifies 12 (although most of today’s products only support 8)
non-overlapping channels. The 802.11g standard calls for the same 11 channels
in the United States as 802.11b, again with overlapping channels.
This affects your ability to have multiple access points in the same area,
whether your own or your neighbors’. Because channels can overlap, you
can have the resulting interference. For 802.11b access points that are within
range of each other, set them to different channels, five apart from each other
(such as 1, 6, and 11), to avoid inter-access point interference.
We discuss the channel assignments for wireless LANs like 802.11b further in
Chapter 6.
Each AP broadcasts its signals over portions of the wireless frequencies
called channels. The 802.11b standard (the most common system as we
write) defines 11 channels in the United States that overlap considerably,
leaving only 3 channels that don’t overlap with each other. The IEEE 802.11a
standard specifies 12 (although most of today’s products only support 8)
non-overlapping channels. The 802.11g standard calls for the same 11 channels
in the United States as 802.11b, again with overlapping channels.
This affects your ability to have multiple access points in the same area,
whether your own or your neighbors’. Because channels can overlap, you
can have the resulting interference. For 802.11b access points that are within
range of each other, set them to different channels, five apart from each other
(such as 1, 6, and 11), to avoid inter-access point interference.
We discuss the channel assignments for wireless LANs like 802.11b further in
Chapter 6.
Check for Dual-Band Interference
Check for Dual-Band Interference
Despite the industry’s mad rush to wirelessly enable every networkable
device that it makes, a whole lot hasn’t been worked through yet, particularly
interoperability. We’re not talking about whether one vendor’s 802.11b PC
Card will work with another vendor’s 802.11b AP — the Wi-Fi interoperability
tests usually make sure that’s not a problem (unless one of your products isn’t
Wi-Fi certified). Instead, we’re talking about having Bluetooth (see Chapter 15
for more on this technology) working in the same area as 802.11b, or having
802.11a modems and 802.11b modems operating in the same area. In some
instances, like the former example, Bluetooth and 802.11b operate in the
same frequency range, and therefore do have some potential for interference.
Because 802.11a and 802.11b operate in separate frequency bands, they’re
less likely to be exposed to interference.
There are also issues with how the different standards are implemented in
different products. Some APs that support 802.11b and g, for instance, really
support one or the other — not both simultaneously. If you have all g in your
house, great. If you have all b, great. If you have some g and the AP detects
that b is in the house, it will downshift to b rates. You might be all set, but
then your neighbor upstairs buys a b modem (because you’ve said, “Sure, no
problem, you can share my Internet connection.”). Not only is he freeloading,
but he’s probably forcing your whole AP to shift down to the lower speeds.
To be fair, many of these very early implementation issues are rapidly going
away while vendors refine their solutions. Check out how any multi-mode AP
that you buy handles multiple forms of wireless connecting to the AP and
asking for service. Some of the newer APs compartmentalize their signal so
that they can handle two at once, which is very nice and almost necessary.
Despite the industry’s mad rush to wirelessly enable every networkable
device that it makes, a whole lot hasn’t been worked through yet, particularly
interoperability. We’re not talking about whether one vendor’s 802.11b PC
Card will work with another vendor’s 802.11b AP — the Wi-Fi interoperability
tests usually make sure that’s not a problem (unless one of your products isn’t
Wi-Fi certified). Instead, we’re talking about having Bluetooth (see Chapter 15
for more on this technology) working in the same area as 802.11b, or having
802.11a modems and 802.11b modems operating in the same area. In some
instances, like the former example, Bluetooth and 802.11b operate in the
same frequency range, and therefore do have some potential for interference.
Because 802.11a and 802.11b operate in separate frequency bands, they’re
less likely to be exposed to interference.
There are also issues with how the different standards are implemented in
different products. Some APs that support 802.11b and g, for instance, really
support one or the other — not both simultaneously. If you have all g in your
house, great. If you have all b, great. If you have some g and the AP detects
that b is in the house, it will downshift to b rates. You might be all set, but
then your neighbor upstairs buys a b modem (because you’ve said, “Sure, no
problem, you can share my Internet connection.”). Not only is he freeloading,
but he’s probably forcing your whole AP to shift down to the lower speeds.
To be fair, many of these very early implementation issues are rapidly going
away while vendors refine their solutions. Check out how any multi-mode AP
that you buy handles multiple forms of wireless connecting to the AP and
asking for service. Some of the newer APs compartmentalize their signal so
that they can handle two at once, which is very nice and almost necessary.
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